Shakespeare Cliff Halt railway station
Encyclopedia
Shakespeare Cliff Halt is a private halt station on the South Eastern Main Line. It is located to the western end of the dual bore Shakespeare Cliff tunnel on the South Eastern Main Line to Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...

. It never appeared in any public timetable and has been successively used by miners, the military, Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...

 workmen and finally by railway staff.

History

Shakespeare Cliff was the location of the first attempt to construct a tunnel under the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

 in the late 1870s, when a 7 feet (2.13 m) diameter Beaumont-English boring machine
Boring machine
Boring machine may refer to:* a machine for boring holes* Tunnel boring machine...

 dug a 1893 metres (6,211 ft) pilot tunnel from the location. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns advocating that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. A further bore was made in 1890 and coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 was struck about 1100 feet (335.3 m) below the surface; Shakespeare Colliery was opened on the site in 1896 and was producing 8 LT of coal per day by 1907.

In 1913, the South Eastern and Chatham Railway
South Eastern and Chatham Railway
The South Eastern and Chatham Railway Companies Joint Management Committee , known by its shorter name of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway was a working union of two neighbouring rival railways, the South Eastern Railway and London, Chatham and Dover Railway , that operated services between...

 opened a halt primarily for the use of miners at Dover Colliery, who continued to work the mine until its closure in 1915. The station was subsequently used by the Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 at least from 1920 as well as by railway staff who lived nearby in railway cottages; the halt was convenient for Abbotscliffe signal box
Signal box
On a rail transport system, signalling control is the process by which control is exercised over train movements by way of railway signals and block systems to ensure that trains operate safely, over the correct route and to the proper timetable...

 and siding
Rail siding
A siding, in rail terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line or branch line or spur. It may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end...

. The station was never advertised in any public timetable for the reason that members of the public alighting here would find themselves on an isolated wedge of flat land carved into the chalk cliff face.

For some years a watchman was based at the station and a zig-zag path was provided to give access from the side of the cliff. The British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 used the station during the Second World War to serve a nearby military camp
Military camp
A military camp or bivouac is a semi-permanent facility for the lodging of an army. Camps are erected when a military force travels away from a major installation or fort during training or operations, and often have the form of large campsites. In the Roman era the military camp had highly...

, and medical staff are also recorded as having used the halt in the post-war period. Shakespeare Cliff Halt was given a new lease of life when work began on the Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...

: workmen carrying out preliminary work used the halt between November 1973 and January 1974, and it was used again in the early 1990s during the construction of Channel Tunnel and Samphire Hoe.

Present day

The halt has fallen into disuse since completion of the Channel Tunnel in 1994. The timber shelter provided for users is barely standing, and the nameboard has gone although its concrete supports remain.
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