The folkestone station

the history of the lookout

Copt Point was officially opened on the 10th October 1998 and was the first National Coastwatch Institution station in Kent. We operated until February 2003 from an ex-Coastguard Station lookout situated on a chalk headland overlooking the English Channel in east Folkestone near Martello Tower number 3. 

Following a cliff fall in February 2001 NCI continued to use the lookout until January 2003 when what was then Shepway District Council declared the lookout unsafe and gave NCI notice to move out, the lookout was demolished but NCI continued to maintain watches from the Martello Tower number 3. The Martello tower was far from an ideal watch station so on the 21st May 2003 NCI moved into a steel portable building which NCI had purchased and for which NCI had been given temporary planning permission. 

In early 2005 NCI started series of meetings with Shepway District Council and their legal advisers about the feasibility of NCI taking over the use of the disused Copt Point Battery Observation Post. Eventually, after much hard work and fund raising efforts by our volunteers, building started in November 2005 and NCI Folkestone Watch Station was formally opened 24th April 2007 by Peter Ladner. 

Notes: 

Copt Point (or Folkestone East) Battery

Construction of the coast defence battery started early in the second world war, the battery covered the Folkestone harbour approaches and Weir Bay and was fitted with two 6-inch Mark XI naval guns. The complex was manned by men of 550 Coastal Regiment Royal Artillery. Folkestone NCI watch station is built in what was the Battery Observation Post. By 1943 the Copt Point area was heavily fortified with barbed wire, slit trenches, a 6 pounder anti-tank gun, searchlights, spigot mortars and two Bofors Guns.

Copt Point 
The origin of the name of Copt Point is not clear but it is thought that the residents of the nearby Roman villa (AD 75 to about AD 300) would have owned slaves many of whom would have been Copts who are an ethnoreligious group indigenous to Northeast Africa who primarily now inhabit the area of modern Egypt. Thus the point will have been where the Copts lived. 

Martello Towers 
The UK’s Martello Towers were built as defensive forts between 1805 and 1812, with the aim of protecting Britain from the threat of a naval invasion by Napoleon. 16 of the 27 towers that were built across Kent remain standing. Two were slowly worn away by the sea and a further nine were demolished. Folkestone is home to seven of the towers, although Tower 3 is the only one which is not privately owned. Shepway District Council bought Tower 3 in 1990 and it is currently unused..