There is a large area of Warren, appearing the larger by reason of its tumbled nature. The South-Eastern Railway runs through its midst, and the two most easterly of the old martello towers on the Kentish coast stand on guard, aloof, grim, grey, and solitary, with all Folkestone for a background. The Warren is full of wild life, and is thus the very antithesis of Folkestone’s stuccoesque conventions. I believe, on the authority of the late Rev. J. G. Wood, that the “rare earwig, _Labidura riparia_,” is to be found here. The information came to him by way of a courageous lady who, wandering over these hummocky hollows, discovered the fearsome thing roaming about in happy ignorance of its Latin name or its exceeding rarity, and, with a courage beyond her sex in dealing with creeping objects, captured it and sent it to that eminent naturalist.
FOLKESTONE--THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW--DICKENS AND “PAVILIONSTONE”-- SANDGATE
We come into Folkestone by way of the mean streets that immediately fringe the Old Town, that survival of the fisher-village which existed many centuries before ever the modern pleasure-resort was thought of.
No one has with any certainty penetrated the mystery of Folkestone’s name. As the Lapis Populi of the Romans, the “Folcanstane” of the Saxons, and the “Fulchestane” of Domesday Book, it remains a puzzle. No one knows who these “folk” were, nor what was their “stone.” The situation of the town is really, when you come to consider it, of the most extraordinary kind; but no one who has not approached it either way along the coast, or from inland, can quite sum up this situation, for the growth of modern Folkestone is so great that, when in it, the natural features of the spot are obscured by many houses. Perhaps the best point of view whence to sum up Folkestone is at the rear, along the road from Canterbury. Up there, on the lofty downs, those bold, grassy chalk-hills, you look down across a mile or so of apparently level land, at whose seaward extremity the clustered houses of the town are massed against the sea. But, coming down into those levels, it is seen that the Old Town lies in a hollow on the shore, while fashionable Folkestone occupies a lofty cliff-top; the famous “Leas,” intermediate between them being the business districts, including Tontine Street and Rendezvous Street.