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 Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

coast of southeast

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It presents a bold cliff to the sea, and commands views over the

Strait of Dover The Strait of Dover or Dover Strait, historically known as the Dover Narrows, is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel, marking the boundary between the Channel and the North Sea, and separating Great Britain from continental ...

. It is centred northeast of

Dover Dover ( ) is a town and major ferry port in Kent, southeast England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies southeast of Canterbury and east of Maidstone. ...

and 15 miles south of

North Foreland North Foreland is a chalk headland on the Kent coast of southeast England, specifically in Broadstairs. With the rest of Broadstairs and part of Ramsgate it is the eastern side of Kent's largest peninsula, the Isle of Thanet. It presents a b ...

. 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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

its coastal battery was built, along with a radar station. Lying between the busy

Port of Dover The Port of Dover is a cross-channel ferry, cruise terminal, maritime cargo and marina facility situated in Dover, Kent, south-east England. It is the nearest English port to France, at just away, and is one of the world's busiest maritime pas ...

and the remote and hazardous

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

sandbank, its two

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

s 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 Kent coastal walk. LB&SCR H2 class 4-4-2 no. 421 (later no. B421, 2421, and 32421) was named ''South Foreland'' after this landmark.

Lighthouses

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

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

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). It is the

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

counterpart of Cap Blanc Nez ( Cape White Nose), at the northern extremity of the Boulonnais in the French ''

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. There are a total of 101 ...

'' of

Pas-de-Calais The Pas-de-Calais (, ' strait of Calais'; ; ) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, with 890, and is the ...

. The two are the landward ends of the fiercely cleft

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 le ...

and their chalk geological stratum dictates the route of the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (), sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau, portmanteau Chunnel, is a undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at ...

. Geologists have theorised that much of the erosion was river erosion from the extended

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

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

Second World War

During the

South Foreland carried a

Chain Home Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal early warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the off ...

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 from

Brest, France Brest (; ) is a port, port city in the Finistère department, Brittany (administrative region), Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of a peninsula and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an impor ...

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. At 12:19, the first salvo was fired; maximum visibility was five miles, there was no

observation Observation in the natural sciences is an act or instance of noticing or perceiving and the acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the percep ...

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 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...

. 28 enemy ships were sunk by the coastal batteries around Dover, which loss deterred use of the Channel Dash by the German surface fleet.

References

External links