II. LOCOMOTION.
The earliest methods of locomotion had not been much improved on in the Sixteenth Century. When Queen Eliza beth made her historic progress through Kent, starting from Greenwich Park on the 14th July, 1573, Her Majesty and her suite did not arrive on Folkestone Plain until August 15th. That gay and glittering cavalcade, consisting of the Queen and her attendant ladies and knights. Archbishop Parker and his train of follovv'ers, and the Lord Warden Cobham with the Barons of the Cinque Ports, was so long that when the leaders of it were at Dover descending from the Western Heights by Cowgate into Queen Street, the rear of the procession was still toiling up Folkestone Hill. It was a grand show, and, in honour to the Queen, it was largely made up of ladies mounted on chargers with rich pilUon cloths of lace and embroidery. The whole company consisted of about a thousand great personages on horseback, and upwards of a thousand two-wheeled waggons drawn by six horses each — the horse-power that was necessary indicating the nature of the roads at that time. Lord Burleigh (who was one of the company) has left it on record that the road by which the Queen approached Dover was as rough and dangerous as at the Peak in Derbyshire. Those wheeled vehicles in the Queen's procession were samples of the lumbering carriages in which great persons began to go about during Queen Elizabeth's Reign; but the day of stage-coach travelling between Dover and London did not dawn until the Eighteenth Century, and then it was seldom that a journey from London to Dover was completed in one day. About the middle of the Eighteenth Century attempts to attain greater speed was made by the coachbuilders, and in 1772 a Frenchman, named Grosley, has recorded that he travelled from Dover to London in one day, in a coach for four passengers and drawn by six horses. The name for this novelty in speed was " The Flying Machine," and the cost of the journey was one guinea each passenger. In those days wealthy people travelled to Dover in their own carriages and took them across the Channel in the Packet Boats. A well known traveller, Miss Berry, gives an interesting glimpse of the Dover Road in 1802. In her diary she wrote: — " Monday, March 8th. — Left London at 11.30 a.m. ; arrived at Sittingboume at seven in the evening. The road from London to Dartford was so very deep in stiff mud that four horses could hardly draw the coach (though by no means heavy) at more than a foot-pace for several miles together. No great road in England is so tedious to travel as this to Dover; the stages are long, the road continually up and down hills, several of which are long and severe, and the postillions in all the stages stop at a half-way house to give the horses water. To go from I>ondon to Dover in one day would, at the best time of the year, be a very long day's journey." She mentions that she arrived at Dover on the second day too late for the tide.
The Mail Coaches (as distinct from the ordinary stage coaches) began to run regularly betwe-en London and Dover in 1786. In 1799 a stage-coach left Dover every morning at four o'clock for London ; and a mail-coach every evening at seven o'clock, the fares on the stage-coaches from Dover to London being then 30/- inside and 16/- outside. The only regular road communication between Dover and London for goods was Rutley's old Dover Waggon, which left Snargate Street, Dover, every Monday, and returned every Saturday. The Dover and London Hoy did more in the way of goods transport than the old Dover waggon. When Heme Bay Pier was opened, in 1832, a coach from Dover ran there daily, whence there was a steamboat to London, the fare all the way being 10/6. There were also coaches between Dover and the various towns in Kent, inland and coastwise, the last on the road being that from Dover to Deal, which disappeared soon after the opening of the Dover and Deal Railway, in 1882.
Although coaches lingered, their knell was struck when the South Eastern Railway was opened from London to Dover, 7th February, 1844. The coming railway was first seriously discussed at a Dover " Common Hall " in June, 1834, but ten years passed before the railway was opened to Dover. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was opened to Dover in 1861. That railway improved our com munications with East and North Kent, as w'ell as giving more trains to London.
A glance at inter-mural locomotion will carry us back to pre-railway days. When ancient Dover was a walled town, and even later, when its limits were bounded by the sea, the hills, and the Maison Dieu, very few facilities for intermural locomotion were needed; but when the town became a resort for wealthy people, who came here for sea bathing, towards the close of the Eighteenth Century, there was a demand for wheeled chairs on the Sea Front, and for light carriages to take country drives. Those carriages were called fiy-coaches, Britzkas and Clarences. The Clarence made its appearance at Dover about 1820, having been named after the Duke of Clarence, then a visitor here, who for his pleasure had a four-wheeled carriage made for one person, with a box-seat for the driver. The business of letting carriages for hire in Dover began about 1830, and a local Act of that year gave the Pavement Commissioners authority to make bye-laws for their regulation and to grant licences to the owners and drivers.
As Dover extended up the valley, the need was felt in the town of further faciUties for locomotion, but, with the exception of omnibuses to and from the hotels and the railway stations, there was no further development until 1881, when Back's Omnibus commenced running between the South Eastern Railway Station and Buckland Bridge, and that was the forerunner of the electric Municipal trams, which ccm menced running in 1897.
Bicycles, in their original form, were first seen in the streets of Dover soon after their use had been demonstrated in Paris at the Exhibition of 1868, tricycles soon following; but some years earlier velocipedes, differing from the earlier tricycles, were built by Mr. Sawyer, of Dover. The motor car was first seen on the Dover roads on the 15th September, 1896— a year in advance of the Dover electric trams; but at least two years passed before the motor car became a famiUar object. Motor lorries for heavy transport, and taxi-cabs to compete with hackney carriages next came on the scene.
The latest novelty in locomotion seen at Dover, one that ignored the old roads and routes, was the aeroplane. The Straits of Dover had been crossed by Blanchard and Tefferies in their balloon on 7th January, 1785, and the fir.st aeroplane to cross the Straits was Bleriot's which flew from Calais to the Northfall Meadow, Dover, on Sunday, July 25th, 1909, the place where it landed being marked by a memorial. Since then aeroplane flights across the Channel have become common. In the Guilford Lawn, Dover, is erected a memorial of the Hon. C. Rolls, who was the first to make a non-stop flight from Dover to Calais and back. This feat was performed on the 2nd June, 1910; but, unfortunately, he lost his life a month later when flying at Bournemouth.