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The Eastern Harbour

II. THE EASTERN HARBOUR. 

It was from the Eastern Harbour that the ships of the Dover Passage sailed forth, organised by i fellowship of Dover mariners before and after the Norman Conquest, under the control of the Dover Corporation which was the sole local authority in the port, as well as the Town, from a very early period. 

Down to the end of the Plantagenet days the harbour seems to have entailed very little expenditure on the Corporation, for the small ships used in those times both for the Passage and for the Cinque Ports Navy were built on the shore, and, when necessary for safety, were hauled up on the beach. That primitive method might have been continued much later, without resort to the expense of harbour works, if the sea, which had been receding since the Saxon time, had not begun to regain the land, which had been left dry and had been included in the town of Dover. That inset of the sea began to wear away the land in the direction of the Market Place, where there were newly erected dwellings, and, to prevent them from being undermined, the Corporation, assisted by the Lieutenant of the Castle, built a retaining wall from near the top of Snargate Street to near the west side of Eastl)rook. This work was subsequently called the '' Old Wyke," the construction and maintenance of which was paid for out of the profits of the Passage and out of fines which the Lord Warden empowered the Court of Lode Manage to inflict on the pilots and shipowners of the Passage for breaches of regulations. When this Wyke was completed, and a level quay made behind it, Dover, for the first time, had a fair and commodious promenade where the people might take pleasure by the seaside, and which, also, was used for embarking and landing passengers and merchandise. An attempt was then made by the Corporation to levy wharfage dues on the townspeople, and a great tumult was raised by the people refusing to pay. There was complaint made during the minority of Henry VL, and in the second vear of his reign the " Good " Duke Humphrey, who was both Lord Warden and the Protector of the realm, in the Khig's name granted to the people of Dover a Charter giving free wharfage to their ships for ever, by reason of which the ships of Dover Burgesses still have free access to the quays. The building of the VVyke had the effect of making an inset of the sea upon the shore below St. James's Church, and creating a little co;'e on the west side of the Eastern mouth of the Dour, On tne margin of this cove, in the year 1440, were the shipbuilding yards; and Henry VI., granted a Charter to encourage those shipbuilders, .so that the ships used on the Dover Passage should be so built as to be " sure, strong, of good and true material as well in wood as in all sorts of ironwork.' Those shipbuilding yards flourished about three centuries, and the Eastern Harbour served its purpose until the early part of the Sixteenth Century, when the mariners made a more spacious harbour at Archcliff Point. 
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