Folkestone & Hythe War Memorials & Roll of Honour: Remembering All Who Fell on Land, Sea and Air

Folkestone & Hythe’s roll of honour stretches from village greens to the cliff-top memorials that face France. On The Leas, the Folkestone War Memorial carries around 500 names from the First World War and 300 from the Second, the simple injunction on its stone—“May their deeds be held in reverence”—doing the heavy lifting of a town’s memory. Nearby, the Road of Remembrance marks the path taken by millions of men and women who embarked at Folkestone Harbour for the Western Front—an exodus that, remarkably, suffered no Channel losses to enemy action on the crossing itself.

Across the district, every community adds its own names and stories. Hythe records 154 dead in the First World War, 64 in the Second, and three in later conflicts, its angel now Grade II* listed and set among a garden of stone. Lydd remembers 66 from the First World War and 36 from the Second, while New Romney lists 42 from the First, 26 from the Second, plus five civilians, a reminder that war does not spare the home front. Sandgate’s memorial—unveiled in 1921 and later fitted with a Second World War plaque—stands where a bomb fell in 1917. Dymchurch adds its handful of names with the same gravity as any city. Taken together, the district’s memorials number in their many hundreds.

Land

From Shorncliffe to the Somme, local sons served in the regiments of Kent and beyond. The district’s deep martial heritage is etched into Shorncliffe Military Cemetery, where 577 identified Commonwealth casualties of both world wars lie, including many Canadians stationed and trained here. On 25 May 1917, Gotha bombers killed 18 servicemen at Shorncliffe Camp—the same raid that brought Kent its darkest civilian day of the Great War.

Sea

The bronze tablets at Folkestone include sailors of the Royal Navy, Royal Naval Reserve and Merchant Navy—men who never saw home again but whose names are fixed in hometown bronze. From the Channel’s “Hellfire Corner” to Arctic and Atlantic convoys, those lost at sea are honoured alongside soldiers and airmen on our civic memorials.

Air

This coast looked up and learned the sky. In the First World War’s Tontine Street air raid (25 May 1917), around 60 shoppers—10 men, 28 women and 25 children—were killed at the blast site, part of 95 dead and 195 injured across Folkestone that day; it remains the deadliest single bomb incident for civilians in Britain during that war. A plaque on Tontine Street marks the spot.

In the Second World War, this district was again on the front line. RAF Hawkinge, mauled in 1940, helped hold the sky; Hawkinge Cemetery today includes around a hundred Second World War airmen, with about a quarter killed during the Battle of Britain. On the cliff at Capel-le-Ferne, the Battle of Britain Memorial—the National Memorial to The Few—names the nearly 3,000 fighter aircrew who took to the air in 1940.

Civilians

War reached parlours and pavements. Folkestone’s civilian losses in the First World War are bound up with 25 May 1917; in the Second, shelling, bombs and flying bombs took further lives. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission Civilian War Dead Roll and local research groups preserve those names street by street.

Places To Remember

• Folkestone War Memorial & Road of Remembrance, The Leas—names of the fallen and the route of departure to war. 

• Hythe War Memorial, The Grove—Grade II*, with WWI, WWII and later conflicts recorded. 

• Shorncliffe & Hawkinge Cemeteries—the long shadow of two air wars, and the Canadian connection. 

• Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le-Ferne—the names and the view towards the 1940 front line. 

• Tontine Street plaque—a small tablet with a heavy history.

If Your Searching For A Name

The Imperial War Museums’ War Memorials Register lets you browse each local memorial (and many list the names). The CWGC offers a postcode tool—Who Lived on Your Street?—to discover service personnel and civilians from your road. It is painstaking work, but it brings the stone back to life.

On this coastline where England narrows to a chalk edge, remembrance is not a ceremony but a map. It runs from the harbour steps to village crosses; from airfield plots to school-day plaques. The names are many. The promise is one: that we will remember them.

The Shepway Vox Team

Pro eis nostra regionis qui vitam sua dederunt

 (For those of our region who gave their lives)