Kent Secret Britain

We live in a country with some of the most diverse

and beautiful landscapes in the world.

So diverse, very few of us know every nook and cranny.

And so beautiful, it'd be a crime to miss any of them.

The British Isles are full of secrets

and surprises, just waiting to be discovered.

-Good, Chris, good. Well done!

-Thank you!

Wow! Oh, my God!

Out of nowhere they came!

It's easy to think Britain is a crowded place,

but with more than 60 million acres out there,

there's still plenty of the UK for us to discover and enjoy.

SHE LAUGHS

The power of the elements really belittles you!

In this series, we're going to escape the crowds

and get off the beaten track.

We're on the hunt for the unexpected...

Did you see it? Did you see it? There we go. Whoo-ooh!

..the breathtaking...

Oh, it's freezing!

..the hidden.

I think we found it!

Look at the size of this place!

This is the place we call home.

This is our Secret Britain.

For the last 8,000 years,

these towering white cliffs have been the first

impression of Britain for everyone arriving here from the Continent.

These cliffs have welcomed and seen off invaders for thousands of years.

They're both our first line of defence

but also a world-famous symbol of hope and freedom.

This is Kent. Whoo-hoo-hoo!

You might think of Kent as the Garden of England,

full of lush orchards bursting with fruit,

or the gateway to Europe for millions of continental travellers.

But scratch beneath the surface

and there's much more to this county than meets the eye.

Heading off-road and off-limits, we want to discover an altogether

wilder side to Kent...

..uncover long-forgotten secrets...

Is this it? Are we here?

..and reveal its hidden history

as the front line in Britain's defences.

Look at the size of this place!

This is my county.

I grew up here, and if someone said,

"Let's go to North Kent for a day out," I'd have said you were mad!

The North Kent Marshes are made up of 50,000 acres of pristine wetland.

Sandwiched between the River Thames and the Medway,

they're surrounded by heavy industry yet feel complete isolated.

I'm still not sure whether this is bleak or rugged beauty.

I can't help but feel a menace in this landscape, and I'm not alone.

Charles Dickens described this marshland in sinister tones.

"The dark flat wilderness,

"intersected with dykes and mounds and gates,

"was the marshes, the low leaden line beyond was the river,

"and the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing

"was the sea."

Dickens was inspired by his actual experience

of this very bleak landscape -

so much so that the very first chapter of Great Expectations

is set here, in this graveyard at St James' Church in Cooling.

Steve Martin is a Dickens fanatic.

He's tracked down the hidden locations that

inspired his literary hero.

I feel as if I've suddenly entered the Dickens world.

Well, there's the inspiration for the opening sequence

of Great Expectations, where Pip would be standing here.

Looking at these graves in the book would have been the graves of

his brothers and sisters and his parents,

and out from the side of the church porch there would have come

Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict,

grabbed him, "Hold your tongue, boy, or I'll cut your throat!"

-Steady, Steve, steady!

-THEY LAUGH

Frightening! I can feel it. I mean, do we know that as a fact?

Yes. In fact, he used to bring,

when he became famous, he used to bring all his friends here.

And it's known he used to come here

and use the tabletop grave there as a picnic table.

I knew that Dickens had a house in Kent

but I had no idea that he regularly roamed these marshes.

Luckily for us, he wrote thousands of letters

and he describes his daily routine.

And he often walked from Gad's Hill, about seven miles from here,

but he didn't go in a straight line, he would walk across the marshes.

And, of course, when he was walking, he was deep in thought.

What about this area as a whole? What was it like back then?

It's probably easier if I show you from up the top of there.

I say, Steve, it's not the prettiest of landscapes.

No, I'd agree with you there.

I mean, Dickens used to call it a very strange weird place,

but it's also got its own beauty.

This, over as far as we can see,

this flat land here, would have all been marshy, wet.

Not ideal for walking, is it?

In Dickens's time, it would have been much worse

cos the sea wall wasn't built at the time, and you can imagine

the marsh would have come right up to the very grounds of this church.

OK. I'm trying to picture that this is the place to live at that time.

-It's not?

-No. I mean, the average life expectancy,

if you lived on these lowlands here, was 30 years.

Why only 30 years?

Well, not only did you have malnutrition,

and it wasn't a very nice place to live, of course you had malaria.

-Malaria here?

-Yes.

A lot of people think malaria is related to overseas

but this particular peninsula was well known for malaria,

and in fact, the very last malaria outbreak in this country,

it was in 1918, was in this area.

Some of the men from the villages around here used to

marry seven or eight times.

I often wonder whether they actually told the ladies where

-they were moving to.

-THEY LAUGH

I mean, it sounds horrendous!

Yes.

The North Kent Marshes aren't easy to love but there are

thousands of overseas visitors who come back here year after year.

Well, I can't decide whether I love it or hate it here.

You see that?

I just don't know. What do you make of it?

-I think it's absolutely stunning.

-Yeah?

Looking out now, you can see the industry in the background,

-but you can see that flock of lapwing just going up, in front of the docks.

-Oh, yeah.

It's those kind of views that I just find absolutely stunning.

'RSPB warden Will Tofts runs a tenacious team of volunteers

'who maintain this bleak bit of Kent as an ornithological Heathrow.'

Now, Will, I'm a Kentish man and I was brought up, what,

just 20 miles that way,

and I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I'd never heard of this place.

Well, not many people have. I hadn't before I started working here.

It does seem incredible that, in the 21st century,

-that this hasn't been developed at all.

-Yes.

And, with a little bit of your help, of course,

-this is now bird paradise, isn't it?

-It is.

It's an internationally important area for wintering birds,

the whole Thames Estuary.

And so they flock here to feed on the mudflats,

and then they come up onto the grazing marsh to roost.

-How many birds are we talking about?

-Oh, hundreds of thousands.

-Really?

-Yes, yeah.

During the spring, we have breeding birds, like lapwing

and redshank, and they need this grazing marsh to breed.

So you can see, out at the moment, we've got sheep

and cattle grazing the ground, and they're getting the grass

into just the right condition for them to breed in the spring.

And then during the winter, we flood the whole marsh,

so it'll be mostly wet, and that's great for all the wildfowl

that come in from Siberia and Arctic during the winter.

For a twitcher like you, paradise?

Oh, absolutely.

-A bit like a secret corner of North Kent.

-'I think I get it.'

I can now see there really is beauty in the desolation here.

These marshes were the inspiration

for some of the world's best-loved literature

and are the destination of choice for the hundreds of thousands

of wild birds that flock here every year.

North Kent isn't the only bit of the county with wetlands.

50 miles south are the ancient and fertile Romney Marshes.

For 25 miles along the coast and ten miles inland,

this vast marshland barely rises above sea level.

Cut off from the rest of the county...

..this is another wonderfully secluded landscape.

Across the flatlands, it's wild and windswept

and there are really hardly any trees.

John Betjeman wrote about here that "the sky is always

"three quarters of the landscape."

He was right about that.

The Romney Marshes are criss-crossed by a network of waterways

and boggy ditches.

It's the perfect habitat for a diverse community of animals

including, I'm told, a loud but rather shy visitor

from across the Channel.

What are you up to here, Owen?

I'm looking for marsh frogs.

'Owen Leyshon is the local wetland officer.'

-So marsh frogs, then...

-Yeah.

-They're not native. What are they?

No, we know the story about these creatures.

They were introduced in 1935 by the wife of the local MP,

Mr Edward Percy Smith, and she brought 12 frogs, put them in

the garden ponds and they promptly all escaped onto the Romney Marsh.

How would I spot one of these compared to the standard frogs that we have?

The marsh frogs, they're the largest frogs in Europe, so the big ones.

-Oh, right.

-But the small ones, yeah, they're very bright green...

-OK.

-..and they like basking in the sun.

So these will be on the side of the ditches,

-so we should have a good chance of seeing them today.

-So we need to go creeping along?

We need to be very careful. They're very wary, so we've just got to be very careful.

-Shall we start heading that way?

-Yeah, let's go that way.

-Let's go quietly, then.

The frogs are skittish.

Getting close to one is going to take intuition and stealth.

-Yeah! Oh!

-There we go.

-Just disturbed every frog in the land!

There's a smaller one and then we'll cross back over there.

Marsh frogs are distinctive-looking and sounding.

They can grow up to 17 centimetres long

with powerful hind legs, which make them excellent jumpers.

The male frogs have prominent air sacs beside their mouths,

and in breeding season, they create an unholy racket in the marshes.

Visitors to the Romney Marsh are not quite sure what it is

when they first hear it.

They think it might be like a duck or something,

and they look in the ditch and they can't see any bird,

but actually, it's this frog which has got this, you know,

giggling, croaking, quacking kind of mating call.

And another name for them, the laughing frog,

I think is quite apt, really.

Going to creep round here. Ooh! Whee!

-That was one.

-It actually it gave me a bit of a fright!

Just a plop. We didn't get a good view of that one.

I didn't see anything. I just saw the plop!

-Ooh, right under me!

-Another one.

I can't believe I walked right past it!

-They're definitely laughing at us, aren't they?

-They are laughing!

With each female marsh frog able to lay up to 1,000 eggs,

you'd think it'd be easy to find a few on their breeding ground,

but I can assure you it's not.

They've just got their eyes poking out of the top.

They're looking at us and they'll just dip down

and there'll be those little ripples on the water.

There's one here! There's one here!

WHISPERS: That's pretty, um... Yes!

Look, he's big, he's big! Whee!

SHE LAUGHS

I've seen my first marsh frog.

Brilliant. On the Romney Marsh!

Yeah, the right place. Oh, there's another one!

It's one thing trying to find Kent's secrets

hopping around at ground level, but what if

what you're looking for is literally over the edge of a cliff?

These are the best known cliffs in the UK, probably the world.

It's a bit scary walking along them,

especially if there's a breeze, but the views are spectacular.

The clifftop footpath out of Dover

was recently voted one of the best walks in Britain.

What these ramblers don't know is that children used to

dangle off these cliffs,

risking their lives to harvest a very valuable plant.

And now I'm going to risk mine to find out why.

The cliffs here are 300 feet high with nothing

but the rocks below to break your fall.

You go first, Will. I'll follow you.

SHE LAUGHS

'Will Owen is a professional forager.

'He makes his living scouring the Kent countryside for unusual

'and forgotten flavours.'

Do we need to be any lower?

-How about a couple more feet?

-OK.

Very crumbly, isn't it?

Oh, my goodness! I haven't done this since I was at school...

..and I was not as heavy as I am right now!

'We're looking for a plant that was so popular with the nobility

'400 years ago, it was harvested to near extinction.'

Whoa! Is this it? Are we here?

This is it. We found it.

-It's this one, right?

-This little one here is our rock samphire, yeah.

Rock samphire was so expensive up in London

that the Kentish peasants were prepared to risk their lives

and those of their children to pick this stuff.

It is amazing, isn't it?

I think it shows how desperate people would have been

and just how strong that demand was.

I just still can't imagine

someone climbing down here -

children climbing down here.

I mean, I feel relatively safe but, you know,

with just a single rope or something?

Yeah, a single rope, possibly in worse winds.

Oh! And I'm not going to look down, I promise you that.

How do you cook this or use it?

Traditionally, it was harvested from the cliff and from the beach

and the shingle, and then put in huge barrels of saltwater,

or brine, and taken up to London, where it was pickled.

These days, we still pickle it, but it is just as delicious.

You can pare it down, put it in salads or

wilt it down with fish and garlic and butter.

And here's something you probably don't know.

Rock samphire is a member of the carrot family

and it has 30 times more vitamin C than oranges.

Who knew?

I guess the secret, really, is that this is a forgotten delicacy.

Well, it's not entirely forgotten.

Foragers are still using it and, as long as it's foraged respectfully,

then that's a good thing.

Dover's white cliffs are better known as the backdrop

to Kent's 24/7 cross-channel ferry traffic.

13 million passengers pass through the port each year

and getting away from it all here can be a challenge.

Local bus driver Brian Vanderveen knows exactly where to go

when he wants some peace and quiet.

The Warren is a secluded pocket of pristine woodland

at the base of the cliffs just two miles outside of Dover.

We started coming down here probably

when we was probably ten with our parents, and obviously, when we got

to teenage stage, then we would sort of sneak down here on our bikes.

We'd climb trees, throw a rope over a branch and make a swing,

you could sit on it, and we would swing out probably over,

you know, maybe a 30-foot drop or something.

We used to get told off cos we'd get home too late.

We'd have to be in by, say, six o'clock

and we might roll in at ten o'clock.

We did get grounded then as well, in them days.

Wasn't long before we were back out

and then probably sneak down here again on our bikes.

The actual place is located right at the base of the white cliffs.

To actually get to this location takes a fair bit of effort.

It's a windy, steep path.

I think that's what helps to make it the place it is.

I've seen quite a sort of diverse wildlife down here.

It's got its own sort of, like, microclimate.

There is various types of plant. I know there's, like...

A certain species of butterfly are found only

in this part of the South East.

There's various sort of wild orchids that grow down here

and are more or less unique.

I've come down here in the past.

I've been down here the best part of a whole afternoon

and I haven't seen a single soul.

You get the fog sweeping in off the sea.

Sometimes, I imagine sort of, like, a T-Rex coming through

the woods or something!

It's sort of, like, prehistoric.

To me, it is the place I treasure most.

It is a special place.

You don't always have to leave town to lose yourself.

Sometimes, there are secret places waiting to be discovered

right under your feet.

The exact location I cannot reveal.

All I can tell you is that we are still in Kent,

and up there is the city of Rochester.

I'm in a labyrinth of tunnels that have been closed to

the public since the Second World War.

And I can only access this forgotten world

thanks to the ongoing explorations of local historian

Stephen Quinton, who's still uncovering their surprising stories.

Steve.

I'm glad you've got that map down here, it goes on for miles!

-It certainly does Chris, yes.

-What is this place?

This was the underground tunnel system underneath the Shorts plane factory.

This was the factory that was built to protect the factory workers

once the bombing started during the Blitz.

It's common knowledge that the Shorts Aircraft Company

built flying boats in Rochester,

using the River Medway as the perfect natural runway.

What's not in the history books,

is that faced with the relentless aerial attacks in 1940, the company

extended their factory underground to escape the German bombs.

They haven't done it on a small scale either, have they?

No. It's certainly quite large down here.

How big is this place?

It's probably the best part of three or four miles,

if you add up all the different sections of tunnels.

Three to four miles underground?

Mm, yes.

I just can't get my head round that.

In addition to emergency office space,

workshops and a medical block, Shorts built oversized

factory tunnels down here to protect vital production.

And out this way, Chris. Yeah, through there.

Yeah, keep going.

'The miles and miles of brick-lined tunnels doubled up as a public

'air-raid shelter, big enough for 11,000 people.'

-Mind your head as you go through there, Chris.

-I will.

I can see some wood.

That's the remnants of the bench seating that was down here,

which was both sides of the tunnel,

and that's where they used to sit during air raids.

Oh, look, there's some writing on the wall here...

-Yes, that's some of the original wartime graffiti.

-Oh, Spitfire...

-LAUGHING:

-Yeah! A Hurricane. We've got a cartoon Popeye...

Ah, look!

A Sunderland.

Is that the plane they made...

That's the plane that was made above the tunnels,

and the parts were made down in the tunnels.

And just up here's another plane, but I love this.

There's obviously a game going on between "G-N-T" and "J".

-What do you reckon, game of cards?

-Could well be, people scoring.

-Scoring!

-HE LAUGHS

Bit of cribbage as well. But that, I just think is absolutely fascinating.

What's going on in people's minds...

Bombing going on above, and how they were occupying themselves.

Exactly.

-Oh, look, a men's toilet!

-Yes.

Or "lavatory", obviously, in the, 1940s.

-LAUGHING:

-Lavatory back in those days, Chris, yes.

-So there were ladies' toilets too, right?

-There were ladies' toilets too...

What sort of facilities are we talking about?

Um, well, they had a Nelson toilet. Erm, basically a large bucket.

A bucket toilet?

For 11,000 people? So what about privacy?

I'm afraid it was just a cloth curtain, and, er, sing loudly.

-LAUGHING:

-Yeah! I bet you had to sing loudly. Goodness.

We've been walking for ages now, Steve.

I wondering where this factory is?

Well, you're just about reaching it now.

After all those tunnels, I didn't know what to expect, but this...

Look at the size of this place!

This is a real factory, isn't it?

Look. Every single section or bay...

-Yeah.

-..numbered.

Original light fittings.

Fuse box over there.

Old boxes.

So what did they make in this factory?

Anything from compasses, gyros, to engine parts.

Anything that was really sensitive that the company didn't want bombed.

So you can imagine that this place was packed, and it was busy?

-Absolutely.

-Yeah.

-Absolutely.

'It's staggering to think that Shorts moved an entire factory underground.

'But while they secretly built planes down here,

'the Nazis were developing their own secret weapons.'

In 1944, they unleashed a fearsome new threat against Britain.

Pilotless rocket bombs, known as V-1s.

And they were launched across the Channel at London.

And nowhere was safe.

This is the tiny village of Little Chart, near Ashford,

just 60 miles from the capital city.

I bet this historic village, tucked away in the countryside,

must have felt as safe as houses during the war.

But looks can be deceptive.

The ruins of St Mary the Virgin,

a 700-year-old church on the edge of the village,

tell a different story.

In the summer of 1944,

a V-1 rocket slammed into the church.

Martin Pym worked on his family farm in the shadow of the church

during the war.

Martin, you actually remember the old church being hit.

Whereabouts were you at the time?

Well, we were on the farm.

It was late summer, I suppose, in the harvest,

and I was 16, I think.

And I was on top of the combine, and suddenly the combine stopped.

So, I looked up and saw this Doodle Bug, flying bomb,

just coming down.

And it looked, at that moment, that it was going to come down on us.

So, I jumped off and, as I hit the ground,

there was an enormous explosion.

So, you actually recall where the rocket actually hit the church,

at what point?

It hit the tower and exploded.

It knocked the rest of the church down.

We were sorry about the church,

because it was a very old 13th century church.

So, no, it was a great loss. A great pity.

Sheila, you used to come to this church when you were a little girl.

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-When I was about five or six.

Sheila Hancock grew up at a time

when the old church was the spiritual hub of the village.

Yes, I came until the actual church got bombed.

I was about nine then, you see.

-This is a picture of what it used to look like?

-That's right.

-Wow!

-Yeah.

So, talk me through this then.

This is the pews.

And where would they have been?

Here.

Yeah.

Here.

And then there's the, the altar rail, you see, which was...here.

So, you had happy memories here?

Yes, I did. Yes.

At the peak of Hitler's rocket attacks in the summer of 1944,

over 100 V-1s, or Doodle Bugs,

were being launched against London every day.

So, how come Little Chart was on the receiving end of a direct hit?

And was this an isolated incident?

I've got a map here which was actually in

one of the local papers at the time.

This is where the Doodle Bugs crashed in Kent.

The numbers are just staggering.

2,400 bombs that actually descended on Kent alone.

They say 200 more than London, which is extraordinary.

So, the history books tend to talk about London

and the big cities that were affected,

-but Kent, as a county, was covered, it was in the line of fire.

-Yeah.

Because it was the route from the launching sites to London,

and that was the target.

So, these ones were shot down probably by anti-aircraft guns.

Then there were fighters here before they had barrage balloons.

Government policy was to defend London at all costs.

But every V-1 that dropped short had to come down somewhere.

That put rural Kent on the front line,

and earned the county the nickname Bomb Alley.

I just can't imagine what it must have been like just hearing

these Doodle Bugs flying overhead.

I mean, it was just random, I guess, when they were going to land

because the real target was London.

Yes. You would just think, "Oh, gosh", you know.

And you could just feel them sailing through the air

until they either hit the ground or hit something.

They were... I think they were horrible.

I'd heard of Kent being called The Garden of England,

but I'd never heard it referred to as Bomb Alley.

There are just secrets everywhere,

even in the places that you think you know.

On the ancient Romney Marshes, the ditches surrounding

Thomas a Becket Church in Fairfield, hold a surprise all of their own.

I've got a question for you.

What has this got to do with this?

The clue is in the name.

I'd always assumed that the fluffy,

puffy marshmallow was dreamt up by a confectionary mastermind

who knew how to whip together sugar and artificial flavourings.

What I didn't know was that, hidden in these reed beds,

is the plant responsible for one of my favourite treats.

This is marshmallow, then?

Indeed, yes. This has come from my garden.

Tell me a bit about this plant then?

Well, it's a scarce plant nationally,

found mainly on coastal marshlands and grazing marshlands,

and it's very, very popular with the sheep and the cattle, they love this.

How do we associate this one with the sweet that we know today?

Well, the sweet was made from the roots.

All the sweetness, and all the kind of gooeyness, down in the roots.

The marshmallow was long considered a medicinal plant,

boiled down and used as a treatment for sore throats.

But the very same natural extract

is also the perfect base for making pillow-like sweets.

I've got you the ingredients. Do you reckon you can use these?

Fantastic. Yeah, sure. It's a strange old ingredient.

While ancient recipes survive on paper,

making marshmallows from the root is a long lost art.

But that's not going to stop award-winning Kent chef,

Stephen Harris.

Basically, what I've got to do is to extract what is, in effect,

a mucus. It doesn't sound very nice, from the plant.

-Do you want to get working on some of these roots?

-Yes.

And we need to peel them,

chop them up, and then get them in this pan of boiling water.

Is that enough, you've got in there?

No. I think we'll certainly need that one.

That one's a bit slimy, that's probably not good.

I'll take that one. And it does take a while,

it takes about 20 minutes.

So, as a chef, then,

-do you mind trying something that might be completely disastrous?

-No.

-You like this experimenting?

-Yeah. Yeah, that's what I do, really.

It's always quite good fun.

Once you've made a souffle, and a hollandaise, and all that,

you've run out of things to do.

You're kind of always, always looking for something new.

The marshmallow plant is rare and protected in the UK.

You can buy marshmallow extract, but maybe that's too easy.

Right. So, we now...

-Do some big whisking?

-Yes.

This is going to take ages!

What does this egg white do?

Basically, we want this flavour of this root to be in something

that's airy and nice to eat.

So, that's what we're doing, is whisking the egg whites.

-Do you want me to take over?

-Yeah, my arm's hurting already!

And if you grab the sugar...

We add the sugar a little bit at a time.

Lovely.

-Who needs a food processor, you're fast!

-Right.

So, we now need to sieve this extract, then we're going to

put it into the egg white, and that is, in theory, marshmallow.

Oh, right. We're getting closer and closer.

I will whisk it all together.

Right, if I do the bag, you could put the mix in, in there.

Now what I suggest we do,

is I'll pipe some of this directly on and, and almost cook it.

One big experiment, this.

It is. Right. So...

So, here we are. We're piping onto there.

Oh! Got you. Oh, they look neat.

-Right. Now, I will turn off the heat source.

-Turn off the heat?

-Yes.

-How's it looking?

-Yeah, we have a toasted marshmallow.

I'm amazed that we've got this far. Let's just go for it.

Right. I'll get one that's not too caramelised.

-There we go.

-How's that for presentation there, look.

-There you go.

-Let's have some of that.

It's actually marshmallow! You've done it.

While the home of the marshmallow is characteristic of the county's

coastal fringes, the interior is dominated by the rolling

hills of the North Downs.

A high, short ridge

stretching from the White Cliffs of Dover and Folkestone...

..all the way across the county, to south-east London and beyond.

The North Downs reach almost 250m above sea level,

which means you have to dig deep into the chalk

to uncover its secrets.

THEY CHEER

It's about 20 years since I last played cricket in Kent.

And there's nothing like it, a bit of sunshine, a village green

and the sound of leather on willow.

But you're thinking, "Enjoyable cricket in the sunshine?

"That's not a secret."

I've heard that somewhere nearby is an extraordinary

subterranean chamber. And I want in.

-Oh, I haven't done that for a while.

-Well done, you!

My best bet is local estate owner, the American born

Countess Sondes, who's lived at Lees Court for 30 years.

Now, I know you're president of this club,

but we haven't come here to talk about cricket, have we?

There's a cave around here, right?

-WHISPERS:

-Where is it?

Right down there. Way down.

So, where we've been playing cricket, in this area,

-there is a cave?

-Sort of.

And you go down about 30 feet and wow!

You're in another world.

Will you go and show me where this is?

-Well, come on then, see what you think.

-All right, come on then.

The Countess may have taken me into her confidence,

but I can't tell you where we're going.

The location of this cave is a secret.

And the entrance is utterly unremarkable

-Chris?

-Yeah?

-Under here?

-Right where we're standing.

Hidden in plain sight, just beyond the boundary rope

and I don't know what to expect.

THEY LAUGH

-It's not a small cave, this is huge.

-It's huge!

30 steps lead down a narrow shaft into the void, where the

atmosphere is damp and chilling.

But what a sight!

It's not a cave, it's a different world.

Four vast chambers carved high above me into the chalk.

I'm really confused,

because, I mean, it's so organised. It's so structured.

Let's have a look down here. Oh, my goodness, it's enormous!

Chalk. It must be a mine of some sort.

Well, what do you think?

I must admit, I didn't expect it to be like this. You said a cave.

You were fibbing to me. It's like a different world down here, isn't it?

To me it's cathedral like. It's like, not anything I've ever seen.

I know it's not a cathedral. It looks like it, with that spire

there. And I can't imagine any person living in here.

So, come on, tell me, what is it?

It's 17th century.

It's called a dene hole, it's to mine chalk and that chalk

would have been used for agricultural purposes. Or it would

have gone into a kiln and that would have been limewater for building.

So, some for cement. And you say for agriculture.

What, like a fertiliser?

Exactly. It would go on top of the soil.

So, this is one, two, three chambers and there's one more.

I mean, do you know how it was mined?

Well, you can even see just looking at the walls.

-It was all done by hand, of course.

-Yeah.

How many people would be down here?

One down here, but then there'd be two men,

that would have to go in a basket, in order to get it up to the top.

So, one man has done all of this?

Thousands of dene holes riddle the Kent landscape,

though few on this scale.

Some claim the name comes from Dane

and think they were used as hiding places from Norse invaders.

But many predate the Vikings by 1,000 years.

And who knows how many remain undiscovered?

I have to say you're a very, very lucky person to have this.

And think of what's right on top of us.

-Oh, it's another world!

-They're playing cricket right now above us.

Some things aren't what they seem.

Apparently, this peaceful waterway on the Romney Marshes

harbours a big secret.

Down with the ducks and the swans,

this overgrown waterway looks tranquil.

The scenery's just beautiful.

You can walk your dog along it, you can even have a paddle,

but just check out the view from up there.

This is no ordinary canal.

It's 28 miles long, goes nowhere

and is definitely not built in a straight line.

This is the Royal Military Canal.

It's the third largest defensive structure in the UK,

behind Hadrian's Wall and Offa's Dyke.

And, virtually, no-one outside of Kent even knows it's here.

In fact, I'm not sure many people within Kent know it's here either.

So, what's it doing here?

Mike Umbers is a retired army officer,

who's spent years unearthing its history.

Oh, well, you made it.

I did make it.

THEY LAUGH

Mike, what can you tell me about this military canal?

You're seeing it a long time after it was built.

When it was new, pristine banks, all that earth that was

shovelled out of there, was piled up here on this bank

that we are now standing on. It was much higher than it is now.

So, all the soil, the earth came up to here,

flattened on this bit here and then fell away at the back.

That's right. It's 60 foot wide, it's nine foot deep.

For people who can't swim, to come up against this obstacle and to have

their horses, their guns, it really was a very formidable obstacle.

Stretching from the coast all the way round the Romney Marshes,

the Royal Military Canal was built as a defence

against Napoleonic invasion.

And the jinks, or the zigzags, were the latest in military thinking.

At every corner, you've got what we would call a pill box.

It would have in it guns firing enfilade, we call it,

right along the jinks of the canal.

Everything that the enemy is doing is under fire.

The canal was actually a secondary line of defence,

sitting a couple of miles behind a string of gun emplacements,

called Martello Towers, built along Kent's coast.

When the two lines are in position, we're going to get him

on the beach and he is going to come across those fields there.

And when he comes up against this second obstacle,

it is a real problem for him.

So, the perceived threat from Napoleon, it was real.

People used to frighten their babies by saying, "Boney's coming!"

He posed the biggest threat since the Spanish Armada.

He was massing his troops in Boulogne to advance on London.

If he hadn't had this and he had broken through,

it was Canterbury, it was London, it was Britain finished.

But that threat never materialised.

So, would you say this became a white elephant?

Oh, no way! Hitler knew of it.

Hitler had this great invasion plan, Sea Lion.

They had paratroopers dropping on high to seize the bridges,

but it was the same old canal.

Neither Hitler nor Napoleon ever put the canal to the test.

One of Kent's best kept secrets, it remains out of action.

Save for one day every other year when Kevin Howell

and the people of Hythe, turn their town into Little Venice.

OK. Finishing touches.

We just need to get the table laid. So, tea pot, cup, saucers, tarts.

I've lived in Hythe for just over 30 years.

We're ready to go.

Once you get costumes on, you sort of go,

"Right, OK, we can do this now."

Every two years,

the town puts on what they call the Hythe Venetian Fete.

I think people if they've heard of the fete, will assume it comes

through the high street on the road, but it's use of the canal

that actually makes it that bit different.

The Venetian Fete has been going for over 140 years.

The float this year takes the theme of Alice in Wonderland.

It's always good fun to do.

Floats are pulled up the canal by a row boat.

That, in itself, is quite a skilful job,

because you've got to control quite a big piece of kit behind you.

That's easy on the road, but on water that's a bit more tricky.

The floats run up and down the canal once in daylight.

The second run comes later in the evening and that's

when the floats are lit up.

There is a big firework display later in the evening.

It's really spectacular. Lights shine out.

You've got the reflections across the water on the canal as well,

which just adds an extra layer of lights and ripples.

It does feel good to be part of the community at an event like this.

It's a really nice, fun evening to come down and see.

Tradition and heritage are a big part of Kent.

The landscape remains rich with historic oasthouses,

nestled amongst the hop fields.

But the stories that went with them are being forgotten.

I used to go to school just around the corner from this very spot

and you never, ever forget that sweet smell of drying hops.

Hops are actually flowers.

They've been used to add aroma

and bitterness to beer for more than 1,000 years.

Today, they're picked by machines and a handful of workers.

But fourth generation hop farmer Peter Hall

remembers hop picking from his childhood being very different.

This is a beautiful part of the world, I have to say,

but I did expect to be surrounded by hop fields.

-Well, you're about 50 years too late.

-Oh, right. OK.

-We've still got a little bit of hops.

-Right.

Two acres that we grow organically.

But, go back to my grandfather's day,

we had 50 acres of hops here, 50 acres at Paddock Wood.

But times change, there's not the demand for the hops.

Beer isn't drunk in this country like it was.

And, so, we've now planted these very fertile bits

of the farm up with apple orchards that we're growing organically.

Until the 1950s, everything on the hop farm was done by hand.

For most of the year that meant Peter's grandfather

and a few farm hands.

But when summer came, everything changed.

Come harvest time that must have been completely...

Come harvest time, it was insanity.

You'd probably have had 400 pickers on 50 acres of hops.

And they would have been here with all their families and

hangers on and, you know, visitors and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

So, I'm imagining now it's about 600 people, isn't it?

It probably could be running up to that, yeah.

It's certainly, you know, it's an awful lot.

Around 80,000 East Enders would pile down to Kent,

from London, every August.

Entire families. Men, women and children

toiling away in the hop fields.

This was hard manual labour.

And accommodating such an army of workers was no mean feat.

Where did they stay?

They stayed in a whole encampment around the farm.

The last remaining or one of the last remaining bits

is this ramshackle structure in here.

Hop pickers' huts were temporary structures,

so it's extremely rare for one to survive.

It's not much, I have to say. My first impressions,

it's like a little old tin hut, isn't it?

How old are these huts, about?

Well, I don't know this particular one, but there will have been

huts standing here on the common since 1850 I should think.

Wow. So what, would one family live in all of this?

No. God, no. No, no, no way.

I mean you'd... There are...we've got four bays.

You'd be looking at, probably, you know, four, five,

six people sleeping in each bay of this.

Hold on a second. Four, five, six people.

Hold on. One, two, three...

What, five steps you'd have a family in there?

Yeah. Yeah, it depends on the size of the family.

-And another family in here?

-Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

-24 people from here to here?

-It could be.

In spite of the crude accommodation and the back-breaking work,

Peter remembers the East Enders seeing their time here

as a sort of holiday.

Tell me, am I a bit soft?

Have I spent too much time in nice comfortable beds,

that I just couldn't imagine living in here?

To be perfectly honest with you, a lot of...

If you think about the East End, some of those

rows of houses in the East End were some pretty squalid conditions.

And, I mean, they were out in the fresh air here.

The children ran wild and they did run wild, I can tell you.

Whole communities would come and work on a particular farm.

Whole streets or groups of people.

They had the same hut every year.

And, I mean, I can remember we had families,

when we've been picking, with the machinery,

we had grandchildren,

great-grandchildren of people who'd worked for my great-grandfather,

who were still coming to work the hop garden and work the machinery.

And they would come down the fortnight before hop picking

for the weekend in their modern motors and all that stuff,

repaper all their hut out, all those kind of things.

Yeah, I'm beginning to turn,

because you actually feel that this is a very special place.

A moment in your life where you're actually experiencing

something different.

Though the armies of hop pickers are long gone

and the old ways are now dim and distant memories,

it's still possible to catch glimpses of Kent's agricultural

past in the architectural relics of its landscape.

But Kent is also a county that looks forward

and it appears to be edging ever closer towards France.

Seven miles out to sea from Ramsgate is Kent's furthest outpost.

It's a little bit lumpy today. Ooh!

I'm sure it's going to be worth it.

I hope it's going to be worth it.

The English Channel isn't just the busiest shipping lane in the world,

it's also surprisingly shallow, only 20 metres deep in places.

This makes it the perfect spot

for a considerable extension onto the county.

Time for some routine maintenance at a far from routine place,

Thanet Offshore Wind Farm.

This was the biggest wind farm in the world

when the blades first turned, back in 2010.

Stewart, what's happening now?

Well, we're going to try and push on.

The weather condition's not that great at the moment.

So, the waves are a bit high.

Team leader Stewart Box is worried that it could be

too choppy for us to climb the turbine today.

So, when you say push on,

we're pushing the boat up against the turbines?

Basically, the front of the boat is pushed, as it's just going now,

pushing it onto the boat. And the revs will go up and he's going

to try and stick on the front, so we can climb up the turbine.

Oh, right. And, what's the biggest challenge here then?

Waves. Waves are a massive challenge here.

When the waves are over 1.5 metres,

it's just too much to go up and down the ladder.

I've made it all the way out here and kept my lunch down,

only to discover that the swell might stop me

getting up the turbine.

-Well, look how steady he's made it!

-Yeah, he's done a really...

-Is that steady or what?

-Yeah, he's made a pretty good job at that.

So, we'll just find out what he's thinking.

What's the skipper... Oh, he's like that!

-Are you going to go?

-He's giving us a middle...

-Do you want to go?

-What was that, a thumbs up?

-It's a thumbs up, yeah.

-Was it? We're going on! Whoohoo!

Oh, there's some ominous squeaks here.

And it's a bit choppy.

-All right to go?

-Yeah, got it.

Whoa! Suddenly everything feels like it's moving.

There are 100 of these 70 metre turbines out

here on the wind farm.

But just because they're fastened to the sea floor,

doesn't mean they're rock solid.

I've learnt to twist these up pretty spectacularly.

-Cool.

-Are you level?

-Yeah, I'm good.

-I've forgotten what to do here now.

-I'll undo you.

-Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!

-You've made it to the top.

-I've made it to the top!

But I didn't think this was going to be moving.

I thought it was solid here. Do you know what's nuts,

it does actually feel quite calm, compared to down there.

The waves are going crazy. The back of the boat is just wild.

This is really very privileged access.

People aren't allowed to come close to these wind turbines.

VIP access, this. Not many people get to come here.

It is, isn't it? Is it access all areas in here?

Wow!

Oh, my God! The wind turbines go on and on into the distance!

And they really take your breath away when you're standing here.

It's quite mesmerising.

These massive turbines

and the spectacular views back towards the coast, remind me that

there's so much more to this county than the White Cliffs of Dover.

-Born and bred in Kent, right?

-Yeah. I was born and bred in Ramsgate.

So, literally from yay high I've been looking out to sea.

And now I actually work out at sea, so it's brilliant.

For the 23 million people who arrive in Britain via Kent

every year, the first impression of the county can be hectic.

You have to make an effort to escape the crowds

and get off the beaten track.

Even in a county as busy as Kent,

there are still places where you can really connect with the landscape.

And going the extra mile can change your perspective on everything.

Next time on Secret Britain, we're delving into Devon.

Welcome to the underworld.

Discovering the secrets of its military past...

-There she is!

-There we go.

..meeting some of Dartmoor's best-loved inhabitants.

Just out of nowhere they came.

..and dipping our toes into Devon's ancient myths and legends.

Oh, it's freezing!