The name of this chalk cliff comes from a mention in Shakespeare’s play King Lear.
The scene turns on Gloucester — blinded and broken, asking to be led to the edge of the cliff at Dover so he can end his life. The one who agrees to lead him is his own son, Edgar, in disguise.
The great irony: the most famous cliff in Dover in all of English literature is a cliff that isn’t actually there in the scene. Edgar conjures it out of words. Gloucester jumps, but lands on level ground, and Edgar then convinces him that he has miraculously survived a fall from a tremendous height.