Local & Reliable Skip Hire in Folkestone.

Local area guide

Skip hire in Folkestone

Folkestone is a coastal town in Kent, sitting beneath the North Downs on the English Channel around seven miles west of Dover, with a population of around 50,000. It was a fishing village and a limb of the Cinque Ports until the railway arrived in 1843, after which it developed rapidly into one of the most fashionable seaside resorts in England. The Earl of Radnor, who owned much of the land, laid out the Leas — a mile-long clifftop promenade with formal gardens and grand hotels — which became a byword for Edwardian elegance and remains the town's finest asset.

Folkestone Harbour was for over a century the principal cross-Channel packet port for Boulogne, and its role in the First World War was profound: some ten million servicemen passed through Folkestone on their way to and from the Western Front, most of them walking down the steep Road of Remembrance to the harbour. The Step Short memorial arch at the top of the road commemorates them, and the harbour arm — restored and reopened in 2015 with the old station platform preserved — has become one of the most popular public spaces on the south coast.

The town declined sharply in the late twentieth century as cross-Channel traffic moved to the Channel Tunnel, whose UK terminal sits just outside Folkestone at Cheriton. Its revival has been driven substantially by the Creative Quarter, a regeneration project begun in the early 2000s that restored the derelict Old High Street and surrounding streets as studios, galleries and independent shops at low rents for artists and makers. The Folkestone Triennial, running since 2008, has left a permanent collection of public artworks across the town by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Yoko Ono and others — the largest urban outdoor exhibition of contemporary art in the UK.

Folkestone sits on the M20 with the A20 running to Dover, and Folkestone Central and Folkestone West stations give High Speed services to London St Pancras in around 55 minutes. The Kent Downs National Landscape rises immediately behind the town, with the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne and the White Cliffs close by. Neighbouring communities include Hythe, Sandgate, Cheriton, Capel-le-Ferne and Dover.

Housing in Folkestone ranges from Regency and Victorian villas and terraces along the Leas and Sandgate Road — many long converted into flats and HMOs — to fishermen's cottages in the old town, interwar and post-war estates, and substantial new development at Folkestone Seafront, a large scheme on the former harbour and Rotunda site. The High Speed link has drawn significant numbers of London buyers over the past decade, driving a sustained wave of period property restoration alongside continuing regeneration.