Building · Kent and the Narrow Sea
Dover Customs House
A stone Crown office set back from the Dover water front, answerable to Westminster and so apart from the rest of the port. Nine officers who rarely move away compare manifest, hull, season and consignor instead of opening every bale, and share an unwritten sense of which foreign seals deserve belief. Its paved yard is the one place on the front that stays still at four in the morning, and interpreters sit in a room beside it.
Where the volumes speak of it
- Book V › 7.1 The House, the Warrant, and What Is Actually Examined
- Book V › 7.4 The Officers, and How the House Is Staffed
- Book V › 12.2 Paper That Does Not Hold, and What Is Carried Instead
- Book V › 17.1 The Three Registers, and Why the Same Beach Is Three Places
- LiB1 › 16.4 Tax and Excise
- LiB1 › 17.7 Tongues of the Realm
- LiB1 › 2.6 Whom to Ask First
- LiB1 › 3.4 Marks, Seals, and Witness
