Shakespeare Cliff Halt railway station

Shakespeare Cliff Halt is a private halt station on the South Eastern Main Line. It is located to the western end of the dual bore Shakespeare Cliff tunnel on the South Eastern Main Line to Folkestone, England. It never appeared in any public timetable and has been used successively by railway staff, coal miners, the military and Channel Tunnel workers.HistoryShakespeare Cliff near Dover was the location of the first attempt to construct a tunnel under the English Channel in the late 1870s, when a 7ft diameter Beaumont-English boring machine dug a 1893m pilot tunnel from the location. The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns claiming that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. A further bore was made in 1890 and coal was struck about below the surface; Shakespeare Colliery was opened on the site in 1896 and was producing of coal per day by 1907.In 1913, the South Eastern and Chatham Railway opened a halt primarily for the use of miners at Dover Colliery, who worked the mine until its closure in 1915. At least from 1920, the station was used by the Admiralty, as well as by railway staff who lived nearby in railway cottages; the halt was convenient for Shakespeare signal box and siding. The station was never advertised in any public timetable because members of the public alighting there would find themselves on an isolated wedge of flat land carved into the chalk cliff face.