The modern story of Folkestone Harbour goes back some 200 years, with its origins in the fishing industry. Much of its development took place in the 19th and 20th centuries to enable its use as a ferry port.
Before this, since at least Roman times, trading ships had been landing on the shore at East Wear Bay in Folkestone, and from about ad 1100 fishermen are known to have pulled up their boats close to the mouth of the Pent Stream, which still flows into what is now the inner harbour. However, the constant movement of the shingle beach by winds and tides made it a dangerous place to land, and boats were often damaged by storms.
In 1804 Lord Radnor petitioned Parliament for permission to build a stone harbour, and an Act of Parliament was granted in 1807, partly to provide potential anchorages for warships during the Napoleonic Wars.
Plans drawn up at this time were considered too expensive to implement in full, but civil engineer William Jessop and a team that included Thomas Telford designed and built a western pier that was completed in 1810, followed by another, running north-east at right angles, completed in 1820. Together these drystone walls, which can still be seen today, provided some shelter from the prevailing winds.
The original Folkestone Harbour Company had insufficient funds to deliver the full scheme and was declared bankrupt in 1842. The harbour was by then somewhat derelict, but the South Eastern Railway Company purchased it with the intention of developing Folkestone as a rival to Dover for steam packets to France. Their new railway line reached Folkestone in 1843 and the harbour branch line was constructed soon afterwards.
The arrival of the railway meant that over the next 50 years the new resort of Folkestone grew rapidly and by Edwardian times it had established itself as one of England’s most fashionable coastal towns.
In may 1930 the former wood and metal swing bridge was demolished and the present replacement was rolled into place, in order to allow heavier trains to use the station.
In 1931 Mohandas Gandhi was invited to attend a Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. He arrived in Folkestone on the ss Biarritz on 12 September. His visit to Britain, during the fight for India’s independence, marked the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, in which the British Government agreed to free all political prisoners in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience campaign.
During the Dunkerque evacuation, in May–June 1940, every boat in Folkestone took part, bringing troops back to trains that were waiting at the harbour station. Over a nine-day period an estimated 35,000 troops and 9,000 refugees were landed, and 64 trains left the station.
During the course of wwii over 2,000 long-range shells fell on Folkestone. The Admiralty used part of the harbour for loading landing ships and as a result, part of the structure was demolished and the materials used to form a landing stage. It was repaired with concrete after the war ended.
Cross-channel passenger traffic resumed in 1946, with services to Boulogne and Calais, but traffic gradually declined over the next 50 years. The introduction of larger vessels on the cross-channel routes over the years exposed the limitations imposed by the restricted water depth at Folkestone, and there was little investment by the owners. With developments elsewhere in roll-on roll-off ferries, Folkestone Harbour did not acquire its own link-span bridge until 1972: the remains of the concrete ‘Dolphins’ that carried the ramp are still visible, the ramp and mechanism having long been dismantled.
Folkestone Harbour was sold in the 1980s, together with the ferry company Sealink, as part of the Government’s privatisation programme. Sea Containers purchased the port together with the ferry operation. The ferries were subsequently sold to Stena Line, which then concentrated its operations at Dover. Although catamarans ( SeaCats ) were introduced on the Folkestone–Boulogne route, these were finally withdrawn in 2000, following the abolition of duty free shopping and a consequent drop in passenger numbers, and heavy competition from other ferry routes and the Channel Tunnel.