Where to Stay in Folkestone, England

What is Folkestone known for?

Artworks are scattered through the streets, and the harbour that once shipped passengers across the English Channel still shapes a coastline the resort trade made fashionable through the 19th century. Folkestone Museum tells that story. Two Martello towers stand on East Cliff, and the Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le-Ferne keeps watch along the same coast.

What are the main landmarks in Folkestone?

A pair of castles comes first. Folkestone Castle and Sandgate Castle answer for the defences, with Capel Battery and the two Martello towers on East Cliff carrying that work into later centuries. The Parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe is the oldest of the churches.

Spade House, Priory House, The Manor House and Shorncliffe Lodge are the named houses, while Folkestone Museum, the Tower Theatre and the Trinity House Pilot Station close the list.

What is the history of Folkestone?

The Romans left a villa. The Villa rustica of Folkestone is the earliest named survival here, and the Parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe carries the medieval record forward from a saint whose name it still bears. Folkestone Castle came later.

Sandgate Castle took the shoreline, while Priory House and The Manor House stand from the centuries when this was a harbour town rather than a resort. Resort money arrived in the 19th century. Folkestone worked as an important harbour, shipping port and fashionable coastal resort for most of the 19th and mid-20th centuries, and its churches multiplied alongside that trade: St George's Church, the Church of St Michael, the Church of the Holy Trinity, the Church of St Paul, the Church of St Peter and the Church of All Souls.

War left its own marks. Two Martello towers on East Cliff, Capel Battery and the Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le-Ferne record the defence of this stretch of the Kent coast, while Shorncliffe Lodge stands inland from them. Spade House belongs to none of that.

The Tower Theatre, the United Reformed Church, Harbour Church and Folkestone Museum fill out what the town kept.

Where is Folkestone?

Cliffs frame the town. Folkestone occupies a valley between two of them at the southern edge of the North Downs, facing the English Channel from the Kent coast in south-east England, with Sandgate along the shore and Cheriton back inland. East Cliff rises at one end.

Capel-le-Ferne lies beyond it.

What is the climate of Folkestone?

The Channel does the moderating. Folkestone takes its weather off the English Channel, and the North Downs at its back leave the town open to the water rather than sheltered from it, which keeps the year temperate and the wind honest. Beach days need the light.

Folkestone Museum, the Tower Theatre and the Parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe cover the days that lack it.

How do you get to Folkestone?

The harbour was the old door in. Folkestone worked as a shipping port for most of the 19th and mid-20th centuries, and arrivals by water came ashore where the Trinity House Pilot Station still stands, though approaches by land through Cheriton carry the traffic instead. Cheriton Road runs through that side.

Sandgate and Capel-le-Ferne lie along the coast either way from the centre.