Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Folkestone, England: A Seaside Town for History Lovers (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

When tourists visit England, they usually stay in London. Maybe they’ll do a daytrip to Stonehenge or, if they’re feeling extra glam, take the Eurostar to Paris. If they wanted to experience something extra special, they’d take the train south to visit the beautiful coastal town of Folkestone.   You’ve probably heard of the White Cliffs of Dover. Next door you’ll find Folkestone, which no one in modern times remembers. It’s England’s best kept secret. But the Postcard Academy podcast is spilling the beans!    My guest Tony Quarrington is the local tour guide and on a two-part episode of the podcast, we share what we love about our seaside town.    In Part 1, Tony and I share fascinating stories to prove that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme (take a listen if you like British history and royal family gossip). In Part 2, we give you all our favorite food and culture recommendations for Folkestone.   I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Did you know I host another show called Podcasting Step by Step? Check it out if you’ve been wanting to start a podcast. Every week, I break down ‘how to podcast’ with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams.   Ready to travel? Get your free guide to cheap airfare.   Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insurance  Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and I am back in Fokston, England, which I guess is my home now. I moved to this artsy beach town from London in January, and now I've signed a proper lease, something that I haven't done in years. So why am I putting down roots, or at least establishing a base here in Fokston? In a two-part episode, I want to share what makes this creative community so special. My guest is Fokston Tour Guide, Tony Quarington. I've done several tours with Tony. He's fabulous. And we both agree that Fokston is England's best kept secret.

We're letting you in on it. Don't tell anyone else. There's the saying that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And in part one of my Fokston episode, Tony and I will share fascinating stories to prove that is true. If you like Gossip on the Royal Family, then stay tuned. In part two, Tony and I are going to talk about our favorite food and culture recommendations for Fokston, and you can visit postcardacademy.co for a roundup of the places we discuss. This podcast is brought to you by my other podcast, podcasting step by step.

If you have been wanting to start a podcast for a while, but you have no idea where to start, I am here to help you step by step. You can visit sarahmicatel.com for a bunch of free resources that will turn you into a podcasting pro. All right, I am going to jump right into my conversation with Tony. He came over to visit me in my new apartment, which is completely empty. Bare walls and no furniture is not the best recording environment because it can get a little echoy, so apologies for that. But hey-ho, if you like history and learning about new places, then you are in for a treat today. Now into my conversation with Tony.

We're on the coast of England right next to the famous white cliffs of Dover. certainly are. But tell us a little bit more about where we are geographically and what this place looks like. Right. Well, we're actually right in the autumn right-hand corner as you look at a map of the British Isles. And we are actually the nearest town to continental Europe. There's literally only 19 miles between Fokston and a place called Cap Grinet in northern France. The connection with Europe has always been very strong, even to the point of going back a thousand years, that Folkestone actually used to sell its shellfish to Gaul, as the Romans called France. So, which surprises some people when you hear that.

But so it's always had that role as a fishing port. We're about 70 miles from London, although nowadays we don't have the cross-channel ferries leaving folks, and as I used to until about 20 years ago, we are also the location for the Channel Tunnel, which again reinforces that connection with continental Europe. We are only 35 minutes from France via the Channel Tunnel. Yes, I could actually in my last apartment see France from my window, which was so cool. I loved sharing that little factoid with people. Right next door, we've got Dover. They're the famous ones. They've got the really big, beautiful castle and the White Cliffs, but we have our own White Cliffs, and I would actually say that

Fokston has a lot more charm. So we both moved here. Why do you love Fokston? Right. I mean, my story is that my parents brought me here for my summer vacations back in the 60s when I was sort of in teenage years. Now, Fokston even then was regarded as a little more market than your average English seaside resort like Blackpool or Scarborough or Margate, stuff the coast. Those are a little bit more fun fair type. Yeah, absolutely. I call them Kiss Me Quick resort.

Buckets and Spades and Fish and Chips and they all have great beaches, of course, great sandy beaches, which is probably their initial attraction. But folks don't have a little bit more cachet. People came to folks and we wanted perhaps a more genteel seaside experience. Although there were amusement arcades and you could get plenty of fish and chips and so on. You had a lot of floral gardens and parks. You had the wonderful Lees Promenade where you can walk along and look out to the channel and so on. Bands were playing everywhere.

It was much more restrained and sort of subtle environment to the typical British seaside resort. That's why my parents brought me here because that's what they wanted. Can we back up and talk about how Fokston became this resort town? So I know that Fokston was kind of a sleepy fishing village, even though they had trade with like friends. It was pretty quiet until Victorian times. And then it became this booming resort. So how did that happen?

Well, this is where we bring in one of the most influential or families in folks in history, probably the most influential, and that is the Radnors. Now, they were originally a Dutch, Spanish Hugano family that were persecuted in Spain in the 16th century and moved to England. Why were they persecuted? Because they're religion by the Inquisition, Spanish Inquisition. They were obviously of Protestant persuasion. And they became very big in the city. And in fact, the family name was Bouverie. And one of the family actually became governor of the Bank of England, which is a pretty big position in. British society. And over the next sort of couple of hundred years, there was a few changes around the, they bought an earldom, which was the earldom of Radna. And it really, and they owned a lot of the area of folks, a lot of property in folks and then still do. Now, it was the fifth Lord Radner in the mid-19th century who conceived of the idea of turning folks and into a fashionable coastal resort.

Now, that was partially triggered by the coming of the railway in 1843. So that then triggered the need for nice hotels for the cross-channel ferry trade, obviously. It opened up fish trade to London, which wasn't there before, significantly reduced the travel time between London and Paris, which was a big thing. But the Radnors at the time conceived of the idea of, as a say, of creating this fashionable seaside resort. We've got to remember here, we're talking early 19th century. Over the previous 50 years, people had cottoned on, or the wealthy had cottoned on to the fact that staying by the seaside was so good for so many reasons, not least for health reasons. All sorts of conditions could be alleviated or reduced by sea air and seawater and so on.

So the Radnors saw folks in as having a role there. And of course it had, it always had, this fabulous scenery. particularly up on the cliff top, what is now known as the Lees. Could we talk about some of the landmarks from that time period? So we've got the Grand and the Metropolitan Hotel. These are enormous palace-like hotels. It's a good word for it, palace, yeah. But they're within like a stone's throw of each other.

It's so bizarre. Can you tell me a little bit about that history? And I think that you said the king actually used to hang out in one of them. Yeah. Well, let's go back to this. some sort of competition between the two hotels, because they do literally sit. There's one fairly narrow road that separates the two hotels. And they're sitting up on the cliffs above the ocean, stunning, stunning views.

Yeah, absolutely. The metropole when it first opened, became particularly popular with the nearby army garrison at Shorncliff. Very important. Camp that was actually used as the basis for, amongst other things, for the Canadian expeditionary force in the First World War. And that was very popular. But what gave the grand the edge from pretty early on was the patronage from the royal family, as you say.

And it was King Edward 7th, Bertie, who used to bring his court and his friends to sit in the grand there. And he also used to bring his mistress, Alice Keppel, who was one of the most famous, well, mistresses of that era, because obviously that was something that all the rich had plenty of. And she was sort of accepted by the queen

and her husband accepted that, you know, they did pretty well out of her connections with the king. And in fact, in 1990... You mean that Alice Keppel's husband was like... Yeah, he was a sort of failed major and they were sort of not particularly well off. So he got some sort of jobs via the king. So that kept them in reasonable order financially.

Yeah, who needs to do that? when you've got the royal family. There was a great occasion in 1909 and the first sprung dance floor in Europe was opened at the grand with a grand ball attended by the king and queen and all their courtiers. And the first dance that evening was taken with King Edward the seventh and his queen. The second dance he had with his mistress. And nobody in that dance floor batted an eyelid. It was just accepted that Alice was that.

Now, the interesting thing with that is that if you come forward 100 years, King Edward 7th's great-great-grandson is Prince Charles. Alice Keppel's great-great-granddaughter is Camilla Parker Bowles. So history repeated itself for like a century later. There's several instances of history repeating itself here in Focston, and then we can get into that more. Sticking to the Victorian Times just for a bit. So what would have been the sights and the sounds back then?

We had like the well-to-do walking around promenading along the leaves. Absolutely. You know, there are photos of literally hundreds of ladies in their finest crinoline dresses and big parasols, gentlemen in their army uniform striding up and down the leaves in front of those grand hotels. Lots of what were known as perambulators, so we call them buggies now, or strollers. I think, for the American audience, but these huge prams or perambulators with babies in. Again, because the seaside was regarded as important for health, you'd see a lot of people also in what are called bath chairs being wheeled along the front as well.

So tremendous activity, all very refined and sophisticated. And in fact, the Lord Radnor's had their own policemen who would patrol the leaves and he's sure that nobody who wasn't of the right quality would be allowed to join in. All the common folk. The common folk, yes, the Hoypolloy. So anybody seen inappropriately dressed or behaving inappropriately would be marched down to the town and quite often put in jail for the night. Wow, just for hanging out.

Just for hanging out, yes. Wow. Yeah, this was the place to be. Even Charles Dickens spent time here, I believe. He did. Charles Dickens came here a lot for holidays, and in fact, he stayed at the Pavilion Hotel, which later became the Royal Pavilion Hotel, once Queen Victoria patronised it. But it was the Pavilion Hotel that he stayed out a lot because he travelled over to France a lot. One of his sons was actually at boarding school in Boulogne. And he actually wrote a couple of articles in the

mid-1850s about a town called Pavilion Stone, and that was Focleston, but he fictionalised it to Pavilion Stone, a couple of great pieces, which I've actually read in coffee shop last year. Now, then he took an apartment in up on the Lees in a place called Albion Villas in 1855 while he was writing Little Dorrit. And again, he would be seen sitting in his window writing in the morning, And then in the afternoon, he would go out to the Warren, which is a sort of wild area, just the other side of the cliffs in Focston, where he would walk for three or four hours at great speed. So he was a very prominent figure. He stayed in Focleson for three months that particular time. Lots of other writers, artists, Ruskin, H.G. Wells took a house at the end of the Lees, technically sangate and wrote two or three of his books, which were based in Fokston area, like Kipps.

And even Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winning author, and a favourite of mine, actually made a short visit to Folkston to get married because he had a long-term French girlfriend who would not, under French law at the time, would have been able to inherit his money when he died. So by bringing her to England and getting married here, he secured that future for her when he did die. So I think that's a pretty cool and romantic thing to do. Particularly when my favorite author does it as well. So I love him even more now. So there's a lot of natural beauty.

We still have some beautiful buildings from that time period. But folks indefinitely faded from the limelight because of the world wars, both one and two folks and suffered greatly. Could we talk a little bit about that time period? Particularly the First World War, because again, that's where folks in really. came to prominence. Now, the first thing that really happened to Folkston when the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 was within a few days, 100,000 Belgian refugees just turned up on the shores, fleeing the German forces that had moved into Belgium. And so Folkton was faced with a humanitarian crisis within a few days of the war, without it at that point being really

involved in the war in any big way. And what is one of the great stories, I think, of Folkston history is the way that the people of Folkeston at the time took these people under their protection, they fed them, they sheltered them, they clothed them, they offered an amazing welcome to them. Now, as the war went on, these people were dispersed to all parts of the country. I mean, folks couldn't cope with 100,000 permanently. Yes, we're in a very small town, to be honest. What is folks in size now? Well, the population now is only 50,000. So imagine. Even now, people tend to think it's more than that, but it's still a small size town. And then, because originally the main

embarkation point for troops was Southampton on the south coast, about 120, 150 miles away, I suppose. And a decision was made that because of Folkston's position, because of the railway that came down to the harbour and the cross-channel ferry. The main port of embarkation for the Western Front would be Folkston. So you then had a huge influx of soldiers coming into Folkston, either by train or, I mean, the romantic idea is that millions of them march down what is known as the Road of Remembrance, which is a fairly steep hill that leads down from the eastern end of the Lees and the harbour.

and the harbour station. In reality, probably most of them came via train from London. So Fawkesham then became a massive embarkation point. They reckon that somewhere upwards of 10 million soldiers left for the war in Fokston, and of course many of them not to come back. So Fokestham was very much involved in the First World War. You had, as I said before, you had the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 50,000 soldiers stationed at the garrison in Shorncliffe, which is a couple of miles out of town. So, folks and was an incredibly busy and important town, particularly in the First World War. Here they have outdoor cinema by the sea. And like a month or so ago, I went and I saw the film Dunkirk outside.

And for anyone who doesn't know, I mean, spoiler, but a lot of people from coastal England, just average citizens, fishermen, they took their own boats and risk their own lives to go over to France and take back their boys who were stranded over there. It was one of the most heroic things I've ever seen on cinema. And I was sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh, the people who are like surrounded by me, that's like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who went and did this. And they were sailing from the shore that we're sitting on right now. It was just blew my mind. Yeah.

And that story, of course, does tend to focus on Dover, understandably, because Doe's is the big cross-channel resort and has been for most of its history. But Folkestone's role again shouldn't be forgotten because every single thing that could float in Folkston Harbour and some that probably couldn't flow very well either went over to Dunkirk for that salvage expedition. And it was literally hundreds of boats from Folkestone alone. I mean, folks that don't get a mention in the film and doesn't really get much of a mention in the history books. But all of those small coastal towns, particularly in Kent, played their part in getting the men back. And as I say, it was mostly your poor fisherman who took their boats

out and risked their life to bring these men back. And I had just jumped to World War II with that story from World War I. So they went and were saving these guys from the Nazis who were in France and also in World War II, Foxton suffered a tremendous amount of bombing. It did. Yeah. I mean, it's role in the sense of, I mean, obviously, forces left from Folkeston via the ferries to go to France. But the main story of Folkeston during the Second War, really, and you've touched on it already, is the fact that it suffered tremendous bombing and destruction. And because the whole of that part of Kent, and it actually runs right up through where I come from, the Medway Towns, was known as Hellfire Corner.

You know, if you go to Dover and you go to the underground tunnels there and so on, you'll see a lot more about the story of the war. But again, Fokston was really badly destroyed in places, particularly the harbour area, which you see the remnants of nowadays. The railway. Yeah, the railway. And, of course, a lot of the railway buildings. And it was a huge complex that were there before the war,

weren't there afterwards. Yeah, I mean, that was the main story of Focston's Second World War. And of course, it's role in Dunkirk, I think. Yeah. So Fokston sort of after that had a hard time recovering. You said that you came in the 60s. So there was still some stuff going on, but it was not at all what it was like in Victorian times. Yeah, I suppose it's probably worth saying as well. having talked about the Radna vision of this wonderful upper crust seaside resort on the cliffs. To be fair, they actually gave a lot of land and arranged for a lot of entertainment, seaside entertainment, to be built for the likes of you and us. The common folk.

The common folk. You mean in modern times. Yeah. So two things happen really. It won in 1924, Lord Radner gave the entire East Cliff area to Fokston, to the council, basically, to say, you know, there were some rules about, you know, no longer grazing cattle on it and creating entertainment facilities, creating the Sunny Sands Beach. That was created after that. And a number of the houses that you now see up on what was then called the East Lees, but also on the beach below the Lees, the shingle, Pebble Beach, a number of features have built folks and had its own seaside pier. It had a massive indoor bathing establishment.

It had a huge entertainment complex called the Rotunda, which had roller coasters and slot machines and various of them. This was when? I mean, its heyday really was, again, the period I talked about earlier. Some of them had gone. The pier had been blown up just after the war. So we're talking early 20th century. The rotunda came much later in the 30s, I think.

I guess I didn't realize they had gambling at the beginning of the 20th century. You also had the big swimming pool, open air swimming pool, boating pool. In the early part of the 20th century, every year there was a regatta where the fishermen and yachtsmen of the area would compete. So there was a lot happening. There was something called the Switchback Railway, which was sort of the early version of a roller coaster. which was very popular, particularly with some of the more upper crust people, people would turn their noses up at the fact that they would write something so lower caste entertainment, but people loved that. So you had this vast entertainment complex underneath the one where the

people were walking around with their parasols and their army uniforms. So the parasols are up on the cliff and then the common folk are riding roller coaster. Yeah, which you could argue is a better place to be, I would have thought. And that was early 20th and then. Yeah, early 20th and mid-late and also through to, if you talk to or if you look on social media and you look at certain Facebook sites, there are people, and I, you know, in one sense I lament it as well, but, you know, people hark back to that era, that era when I came 60s and 70s before the resort declined, look back to that to being the golden age in some sense. People had a bit of a bit of. more money, they had holidays that they didn't have before. The sun always shot, which I remember

it didn't, but people think that nostalgia is a wonderful thing. Yeah, so in that 60s, 50s through 60s, I mean, Britain was a very settled country then. I don't know. We've ever heard the phrase that one of the prime ministers of the time, Harold McMillan said, you've never had it so good. I mean, any American listeners will remember the 50s as being an era of where people were starting to get more money, people moved out to the suburbs, lots of labour saving devices in the house. It was a stable period. Okay, you had the Cold War in the background, but it was generally a stable period and it was the same in Britain, steady growth and probably through the early 60s.

But then that's when folks and along with pretty much every seaside resort around the British coast started to lose a lot of the people because, A, they had long. the holidays that have been enshrined in law. And secondly, you had the low-cost airlines starting to appear and people started going essentially to places like Spain and Portugal and perhaps France to an extent, a bit of Italy, Greece. People started taking their holidays abroad where they would get guaranteed some. They could afford it. So why would you not go there? So the seaside resorts declined very badly and focused them as bad as everywhere else. Yeah. To be honest, 70s, 80s, 90s. Now, anybody who lived, now, I didn't live in Fokston then. So some people would

say, well, who are you to say? But I mean, general understanding is that things started getting knocked down. The rotunda went, which was a great popular feature of Fokston. Yeah, where I'm living now, I love it. There's, like, cute pubs near the quarter house. Like, our scene, got a vegetarian restaurant near me. Like, it's amazing. But I've had local people, say to me. A hundred yards. Yeah. Yeah.

I've had people say to me, though, oh my gosh, a few years ago, I wouldn't even have stepped, like, foot anywhere near where you live. It would have been too dangerous. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I remember Tonstein Street where we're sitting now, which is one of the two main historic creative, now creative street, along with the old high street, which virtually runs parallel.

I remember Tonside Street when I was a kid, but it was still sort of in the seaside era. So there were lots of tea rooms and fish and ship bars and amusement arcades and so on. But after that, it did become very run down, quite dangerous at night, lots of shops closing. Now, to be fair, you know, it's not there yet. For me, I feel like we're in a golden age because of the art scene. And that was really propelled by a sort of modern day, Radner, I think. Can we talk a little bit about Roger DeHan and that whole story? Yeah, absolutely.

Now, the two great names in folks in history are Radnor and Dahan. Sidney Dahan was a chef in London before the Second World War. He served in the army and he was arrested and spent time in a German prisoner of war camp. But because he was a chef, he was able to cook for the whole camp. So it probably wasn't the worst prisoner of war experience than anyone had. When he came out after the war, he had this vision of creating a seaside travel company. And what he saw was everybody going home again at the end of August. And of course, the children went back to school then, so that made sense.

But he saw there was a growing population of people of means with a bit of money. who were no longer working, and that they also wanted entertainment. Retired people, you mean? Retired people, yeah, exactly. And so he came up with this idea of creating holidays for the over 60s at the time. It's now over 50s that has been reduced over time. And he started it up with a single hotel called the Rhodesia Hotel, which is just a few meters off the Lee's Promenade in the center of folks.

at 12-roomed hotel. He would offer coach travel to and from the hotel, excursions while people were staying there, three meals a day included. And that would be during the months of the year when people wouldn't have come to folks and otherwise. Now, to cut a long story short, that is now one of the biggest travel companies in the world. You begin a billionaire doing that. Yes, absolutely.

Saga now, they release cruise ships once a year now. That's what they've come from, for the 12-room hotel to a company that releases a new cruise ship every year. That provides the whole range of travel, holidays, insurances, other financial services and so on. Massive. When it floated on the stock exchange, it was the biggest first day rush there's ever been. Wow. Yeah, and that was this 12th room hotel. Now, when he died, two of his sons, Roger and, I think it's Peter, inherited, and they later sold the company as it got bigger and bigger for $1.4 billion.

Roger, although the family was originally from London, they'd obviously made their fortune in Focon, and they loved Focon, obviously. So Roger, he could have gone and spent his money, he could have put it in stocks and shares, he could have bought soccer club, he could have just gone and lived on a desert island. or whatever. But he decided to invest the significant proportion of that money and give it back to the town he loved, which was Fokston. I hope you enjoyed that first part of my conversation with Tony. In the next episode, we will share all of our Fokston favorites that you must try when you come to visit us here in Fokston, which you should do because we're only an hour away from London by train. You can find out more about Tony by visiting his Facebook page, Tony's Fabulous Fokston, and you can visit postcardacademy.com to see photos of Fokston.

and I will also share links to our favorite places in town. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening. And have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.