Some interesting names for the roads on the Discovery Park site with their link to the extraordinary history of the area. Hopefully most forumites will be conversant with this as it has all been covered before on the forum and there is plenty of info on the web but here is a potted history.
During World War One, the British Army needed to transport vast quantities of war material to the front in France. With Dover bursting at the seams with the vessels of the Dover Patrol and Folkestone dedicated to transporting the troops, they elected to build a complete new temporary port along the banks of the Stour.
The Royal Engineers constructed this enormous complex in short order. With British shipbuilding strained to the limits with the demands of war, great numbers of barges were constructed on site and were towed backwards and forwards to France where they distributed the supplies along the French canal system.
By early 1918, a train ferry berth and three train ferries had been constructed and huge quantities of material, including tanks and large guns, could be transported swiftly across to Calais.
Here are some illustrations from the excellent book on Richborough Port by Robert Butler.
The two ton electric transporters seen in the background of this photo were the forerunner of the present day container cranes and preceded them by several decades.
The train ferries brought back the Army cars, lorries and buses from France and this roll on roll off traffic preceded the later RORO ferries by decades.
Kitchener Camp and Haig Camp were to become the site of the Pfizer buildings. Left click on the maps to enlarge.
Almost all this infrastructure was dismantled after the end of WW1. The remaining WW1 buildings on Kitchener Camp were used to house Jewish refugees as WW2 dawned, eventually amounting to around 5,000. These were dispersed by 1943 when the Royal Navy took the camp over and it became a naval shore establishment named HMS Robertson and was used to train Royal Marines for the impending invasion of Southeast Asia and Japan, subsequently rendered unnecessary by the Japanese surrender following the dropping of the atom bombs.
