Saturday, July 29, 2006

Aycliffe Cottages, Old Folkestone Road, Dover

The below postcard is likely to come from the 1920's and is simple entitled, "Aycliffe, Dover". At first I expected them to have been demolished as part of the A20 road project in the 1990's, but after enquiries on Dover Forum, it turned out they still existed !

Driving along Old Folkestone Road it was evident that the housing estate had sprung up during the past decades below the hills of the Western Heights. Research shows that in the 1930's they were called Aycliffe Cottage, numbers 1-8, on Archcliffe Road (Archcliffe Fort being a few hundred metres away). In the background can be seen one of moats of the Western Heights defences, below which can been seen the King Lear public house further down the road.

Today, the houses have been expanded and updated, but the core is more or less unaltered with the original porches. Outside the mud track has given way to the tarmac and cars. Sometime between 1939 and 1956 the road was renamed Old Folkestone Road a continuation of the road that lead toward Folkestone. In 1939 the residents of the cottages were as below, with the 1956 occupiers in brackets:-

1 - Roland Nix (as 1939)
2 - George Rogers (as 1939)
3 - Neville Wissenden (as 1939)
4 - Robert Haves (Henry Morris)
5 - Cyril Cloke (William Lazorek)
6 - William Lee (Thomas Britt)
7 - George Chesterton (William Englefield)
8 - William Gibbs (as 1939)





4 Comments:

Anonymous aaronm baker said...

yes they do still remain up aycliffe and aycliffe it a nice little place any many remember it bk in the old days and thats why its a place to never leave . the houses remain but the pub is gone now

8:47 PM  
Anonymous Sandy T said...

Thank you for the post and the information. You have the occupants of #6 flipped though - Thomas Britt (my great-great grandfather) would have lived there in 1939, not 1956, as he passed away in 1940. :)

9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm wondering whether the road was re-named as Old Folkestone Road prior to 1926. I am researching the Pay family and according to an obituary for Isabel Clara Pay, she and her husband, John, were living at 3, Old Folkestone Road when Isabel died on 16th January 1926.

3:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can I please clarify No 6 as I believe William Lee might be my grandfather who would have lived there in 1956?

12:38 PM  

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