Roman Painted House - Dover - TravBuddy

Samphire Hoe sticks out as a childhood memory of days exploring with my brother and my grandma. We'd spend hours roaming around this wonderful site. During the construction of the Channel Tunnel, the area was known as the Shakespeare Cliff Lower Construction Platform. In 1994 a competition was organised by Eurotunnel and the Dover Express to find a new name for the newest part od England. Hundreds of entries were received, from which the judges chose Samphire Hoe.

Gillian Janaway came up with the name. Having been an English teacher she was familiar with Shakespeare's King Lear.

'There is a cliff whose high and bending head looks fearfully in the confined deep.......The crows and choughs that wing the midway air scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!'.

At the time that William Shakespeare was writing King Lear he was said to have travelled through Dover. It was his familiarity with the cliffs that may well have inspired his descriptions. To this day the first cliff on the West side of Dover is known as Shakespeare cliff.

Rock Samphire was once collected from the cliffs, its fleshy green leaves were picked in May and pickled in barrels of brine and sent to London, where it was served as a dish to accompany meat.

The samphire that is eaten today is marsh samphire, also known as glasswort or salicornia; it grows on the upper edges of salt marshes. It is unrelated to rock samphire, which grows on the eroding edges of the cliffs. Its seeds were also sown onto the top edge of the sea wall at the Hoe. A 'hoe' is a piece of land which sticks out into the sea.

In 1970 The Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit made a find that was to be of significant importance to the Roman history of Britain. It was the discovery of a very well preserved Roman house, complete with many artefacts that were in excellent condition. The house itself was probably a Mansio, an official transit hotel. The Dover town was an extensive site and took the next 22 years to excavate. It was a huge excavation by any standards and the Unit's people removed over 5,800 tons of soil. Enough to fill 580 10 yard lorries! There were in excess of 20,000 fragments of painted walls found inside the building. During the work, a layer of finely worked flint implements that dated back to the Neolithic period of about 2000 BC were found. This indicates that the site itself had be of considerable importance throughout British history. The resultant site is described by the Unit's secretary Edna Philp as "The best preserved Roman town house in Britain." There are a total of five rooms, very well preserved with walls from 4-8 feet in height. Of special interest are some 400 square feet of in situ finely painted wall plaster. To support the belief that this was a stopping house for those on a journey, the designs in the plaster relate to Bacchus, the God of wine and revelry, both appropriate for weary travelers. There is also a well preserved Hypocaust that shows graphically the famous Roman central heating system. The house was built about 200 AD and over the next 100 years it was extensively altered for both civil and military purposes.

The house has many displays relating to Roman Dover, with over 30 display panels and several cases showing items unearthed during the excavations. There is also brass rubbing, mosaic making, Roman games to play and a touch table.


Painted plaster, the most extensive ever found north of the Alps. Above a lower dado, of red or green, visitors can still see an architectural scheme of many coloured panels framed by fluted columns.
The columns sit on projecting bases above a stage, producing a clear 3-D effect. Parts of 28 panels survive, each with a motif relating to Bacchus, the Roman God of wine.



My grandma used to take me and my brother here every year when we were young, we always enjoyed it especially doing the brass-rubbing on several large and small figures from Roman and medieval times.