South Foreland is a

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

headland on the

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

coast of southeast

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It presents a bold cliff to the sea, and commands views over the Strait of Dover. It is centred northeast of Dover and 15 miles south of North Foreland. It includes the closest point on the Island of Britain to the European mainland at a distance of . This proximity gives it military significance and during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

its

coastal battery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of c ...

was built, along with a radar station. Lying between the busy Port of Dover and the remote and hazardous

Goodwin Sands Goodwin Sands is a sandbank at the southern end of the North Sea lying off the Deal coast in Kent, England. The area consists of a layer of approximately depth of fine sand resting on an Upper Chalk platform belonging to the same geologi ...

sandbank, its two lighthouses were important for navigation before their disuse. Much of the area is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public; it is traversed by the

Saxon Shore Way The Saxon Shore Way is a long-distance footpath in England. It starts at Gravesend, Kent, and traces the coast of South-East England as it was in Roman times as far as Hastings, East Sussex, in total. This means that around Romney Marsh the ...

, the Kent coastal walk.

Lighthouses

Two lighthouses are on South Foreland: the lower light disused since 1910 and the upper light, a

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

asset, disused since 1988.

Geography and geology

South Foreland marks the south-western limit of St Margaret's Bay (named after the village of

St Margaret's at Cliffe St. Margaret's at Cliffe is a three-part village situated just off the coast road between Deal and Dover in Kent, England. The centre of the village is about ¾ mile (1km) from the sea, with the residential area of Nelson Park further inland, and ...

). It is the

geological Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other E ...

counterpart of

Cap Blanc Nez Cap Blanc-Nez (french: kap blɑ̃ ne, literally "Cape White Nose" in English; from Dutch ''Blankenesse'', white headland) is a cape on the Côte d'Opale, in the Pas-de-Calais ''département'', in northern France, culminating at 134 m. The clif ...

( Cape White Nose), at the northern extremity of the Boulonnais in the French ''

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (french: département, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. Ninety ...

'' of Pas-de-Calais. The two are the landward ends of the fiercely cleft Strait of Dover

land bridge In biogeography, a land bridge is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonize new lands. A land bridge can be created by marine regression, in which sea leve ...

and their chalk geological stratum dictates the route of the Channel Tunnel. Geologists have theorised that much of the erosion was river erosion from the extended

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...

and numerous southern North Sea channels discharging through the Strait of Dover.

Second World War

During the

South Foreland carried a Chain Home radar station similar to the still-extant towers at Swingate, east of Dover.

South Foreland battery

This was a

coastal artillery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of ...

battery with four Mark X 9.2 inch guns and a network of

bunker A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. T ...

s and ammunition stores, northeast of the lighthouse on the road to St Margaret's. The site was cleared after World War II leaving traces, although since these have become heavily overgrown. The heavily reinforced positions were hewn into the cliff in the three months from 28 December 1940. The first gun arrived on 25 March 1941. No. 4 gun was test fired on 28 November 1941. On 12 February 1942, the light battleships '' Gneisenau'', '' Scharnhorst'' and the heavy cruiser '' Prinz Eugen'' attempted the

Channel Dash The Channel Dash (german: Unternehmen Zerberus, Operation Cerberus) was a German naval operation during the Second World War. ( Cerberus), a three-headed dog of Greek mythology who guards the gate to Hades. A (German Navy) squadron comprisin ...

from

Brest, France Brest (; ) is a port city in the Finistère department, Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of the peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French m ...

to Germany. The Foreland's K-band radar started to track the ships of the Brest Group coming up the Channel towards

Cap Gris Nez Cap Gris-Nez (literally "cape grey nose"; ) is a cape on the Côte d'Opale in the Pas-de-Calais ''département'' in northern France. The 'Cliffs of the Cape' is the closest point of France to England – from their English counterparts at ...

. At 12:19, the first salvo was fired; maximum visibility was five miles, there was no observation of fall of shot by sight. The blips of the radar showed zig-zagging of the ships prompting full battery salvo firing. 33 rounds were fired at the German ships, which were moving out of range at . The Germans revealed that all had missed. By the end of the war the four guns had fired 2,248 shells, most in the months before and after the

Normandy landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...

. 28 enemy ships were sunk by the coastal batteries around Dover, which loss deterred use of the

by the German surface fleet.

References

External links