Folkestone, Kent

Description
Folkestone, a seaport town and parish, a municipal and (in conjunction with Hythe) a parliamentary borough in Kent. The town stands on the coast, and has stations on the S.E.R., 70 miles from London, 6^ WSW of Dover, and 15 SSE of Canterbury. Acreage of the civil parish, 2482; population, 23,905; of the ecclesiastical, 23,216; of the municipal borough, 23,711. For municipal purposes the town is divided into three wards, and is governed by a corporation consisting of mayor, 4 aldermen, and 14 councillors. Its name was written Folcestane by the Saxons, Fulchestan in Domesday Book, and has been regarded as a corruption of variously Fulke's town, signifying " the town of Fulke," Folkh'-stane, signifying "the fairies' rock," and Flos-stane, signifying (t the break in the rock." Its site is a congeries of cliffs and hillocks, such as to have induced Thomas Ingoldsby to say-" Rome stood on seven hills, Folkestone seems to have been built on seventy." Folkestone Hill is 575 feet high, and commands a fine view of the town, and a rich i2 * and extensive prospect over coast and sea. A ridge of cliffs, overhanging a coast road, extends on the one hand to Sand-gate, another ridge of cliffs extends on the other hand all the way to Dover, and these cliffs, besides affording very fine sea views, command in clear weather a distinct prospect of the French coast. The original town was known to the Romans, but has disappeared beneath the-waves, and even the succeeding town dates from remote times, but suffered such ravages by the Danes and the French, and has at different times sustained such damage by the beating of the billows, that it now presents far fewer ancient remains than might have been expected from its antiquity. Roman coins and bricks have been found, pieces of Saxon arms and pottery also have been found, but the extant ancient remains consist merely of traces of building, and can be observed only as shapeless fragments embodied in walls- A Roman watch-tower is believed to have stood on a cliff a short distance S of the present parish church ; a castle was built on the same site, about the year 630,. by Eadbald, king of Kent; a nunnery was founded within the castle by Eanswith, daughter of King Eadbald£ was ravaged by the Danes, and was afterwards replaced by a Benedictine priory; another castle, for a fortress, was built on the same site, by the Avranches de Abrincis, who became lords of the manor soon after the Norman Conquest; but all these structures, and the very cliff on which they stood, have been swept away by the sea. Part of the area which they occupied is marked by the present Bail-a name corrupted from ballium; a reservoir here, called the Bail Pond£ is supplied from a spring which St Eanswith is fabled to have brought hither by a miracle, and a reach of ancient wall still standing on the E side may perhaps be Norman£ The Benedictine priory was rebuilt on another site, at a distance of 560 yards, was made a cell to Lonlay Abbey in Normandy, and served for a time to maintain the previous importance of the town by attracting devotees; some slight traces of building, supposed to indicate its site,. are still observable in the parsonage garden. (t Great ruins of a solemn old nunnery," are mentioned by Leiand as existing i£ his time; and Roman tiles are said by another writer to have been traceable among these ruins, but all these, both walls and tiles, have vanished. The town, at Domesday, had five churches, and was an honour held by Nigel de Mundeville; but, in spite of its continuing to possess the attraction of Eanswith's priory, it appears to have declined, and after the Reformation it sank into obscurity till toward the end of the 18th century, when it came into notice as a fishing town. But, by the opening of the railway to it, by consequent improvements on its harbour, by the constituting of it a packet station to Boulogne, and by the discovery of its position and environs as eminently suited for seabathing quarters, it has undergone vast change, and is now one of the most frequented and fashionable watering-places on the south-east coast.