Dover Museum & Maison Dieu
Dover’s history has always been determined by its crucial location on the English Channel, just over twenty miles away from France and continental Europe.
Dover
Free
Accessible by public transport
Toilets
Geosite details
Dover’s history has always been determined by its crucial location on the English Channel, just over twenty miles away from France and continental Europe. From Bronze Age boats to Caesar’s Romans, the Battle of Britain and cross-Channel ferries, the separation of Dover from Europe by the Channel is a fundamental part of the town’s history. You can discover all of this and more at the Dover Museum, situated in the heart of the town in Market Square.
Probably the most famous exhibit in the Dover Museum is the Bronze Age Boat Gallery, containing a boat found during excavations for the A20 road through the town.
The Dover Bronze Age Boat is one of the oldest largely intact boats ever discovered in the world, and is evidence that cross-Channel trade was taking place at Dover over 3,500 years ago.
Just a ten-minute walk through the centre of Dover takes you from the Museum to the Maison Dieu, which for many years served as Dover Town Hall. The Maison Dieu is an extraordinary building made with a significant amount of flint which has been ‘knapped’ to produce a flat external edge. Flint has been widely used as a building material in the Cross-Channel Geopark over the centuries due to the fact that it can be so easily found within the Chalk. The Maison Dieu is currently undergoing a multi-million pound restoration which will see it reopen to the public on a permanent basis in 2025.
