Taken from source: 'According to Bavington Jones (1907) ‘at no. 153 Snargate Street, or thereabouts, there was once a private theatre’. Eighteenth-century records show that this theatre was first erected by William Fector in 1783 but was given up shortly afterwards (by 1790) when a new public theatre was built on the opposite side of Snargate Street. This theatre was known as the Theatre Royal and is shown opposite nos 152 and 153 Snargate Street on the 1859, 1898 and 1907 Ordnance Survey maps and 1905 Goad Insurance plan. The theatre was later renamed the Royal Hippodrome Theatre Similar to the neighbouring property (no. 152), the early trade directories record no. 153 in use as a drapers shop for John Martin. It briefly changes tack, moving into hardware, before Edward Philpott re-establishes his linen drapery business, between 1859 and 1867. The property carries on in a similar vein, as a baby linen warehouse under Miss Sophie Maxwell in 1874. By 1878, it had had a fundamental change of direction and had become the ‘Shaftesbury Temperance Hotel’ under the management of Frederick Menear. The ‘Shaftesbury Temperance Hotel and Peoples Café’ is listed in the 1891 trade directory and it was recorded as ‘The Shaftesbury Temperance Hotel and Restaurant’ from 1899 to 1909. It was simply listed as a restaurant (possibly a reference to the relevance of the Temperance movement during and after the Great War), under the same management of Mrs John Chambers until 1915. Thereafter it remained as a restaurant under a succession of owners, including John Benjamin Coller, Lionel Newbury and latterly Guy Walter Chapman until it ultimately appears in the trade directory of 1938. The Goad Insurance plan of 1905 records that the highest terrace to the rear of nos 152 and 153 was occupied by a timber-built gymnasium, accessed via a flight of steps from the rear of no. 153. The three-storey hotel had a cellar, plastered brick elevations and a double-pile hipped roof. Its façade had three windows at first and second floor levels and included a narrower and lower pitched range, with tile hung elevations, to the rear and towards the cliff revetment. It remained a hotel/restaurant until it finally closed early in 2005, at which point it was known as ‘The Gateway Hovertel’. During its lifetime the building had expanded across the sites of nos 149−152 Snargate Street to the south-west, with a flat-roofed extension, arranged around a rear courtyard. The hotel closed in 2005 and was demolished in October 2010. ' (1)

During an archaeological excavation undertaken at the site by PCA in 2016 a number of 19th and 20th century features were located and were interpreted as belonging to (the now demolished) 153 Snargate Street. Features dating to the earlier post medieval period are discussed elsewhere (TR 34 SW 1154) but the earliest feature dating to the 19th and 20th century occupation of the site was the upper part of a wall, aligned northwest to southeast and which appeared to be part of a larger structure that included another wall to the north and a flint/chalk core. This likely represents the party wall between 153 and 154 Snargate Street, it consisted of regularly placed chalk blocks set in a light yellowish white chalky mortar. The northern wall of the basement abutted the southern face of this party wall, this was truncated by a further wall running on a northwest to southeast alignment and consisted of both well and poorly made red bricks. To the south and parallel to these walls were two further walls, the northern most, which was situated 1.2m to the south of the northern basement wall, appeared to form part of an entrance to the cellar. The southernmost of these two walls, which was located 2.3m to the south of the first wall, was heavily truncated and only six courses of brick survived, illustrating that the southern portion of this basement suffered more from past impacts. These two walls are likely the base of a large fireplace for the room above. (2)

<1> Pre-Construct Archaeology, 2016, BUILT HERITAGE RECORDING AT NOS 149-156 SNARGATE STREET, DOVER, KENT, CT17 9BZ (Unpublished document). SKE31673.

<2> PCA - Shane Maher, 2016, 149-156 Snargate Street, Dover, Kent - An Archaeological Assessment (Unpublished document). SKE32330.