Chatham, Medway

Chatham is an English town that developed around an important naval dockyard on the east bank of the River Medway in the county of Kent. Together with Rochester and Gillingham it is today part of the Medway Towns conurbation.

History

Chatham Dockyard was established by Henry VIII and the small village of Chatham grew. At one point thousands of men were employed at the dockyard, and many hundreds of ships and submarines were launched there including HMS Victory which was built there in the 1760s. The dockyard was shut as an operational site 1984 by the Thatcher government; a large part of it became a historic site (operated by Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust) and the rest has been developed for housing, industrial sites and as a commercial marina.

Chatham is also the site of many of the fortifications built to protect the dockyard from invasion. The Great Lines (abbreviated from "great lines of defence") were built across the neck of the peninsula formed by the bend in the river. By 1758 this stretched for more than a mile from Fort Amherst (today a heritage site) to Gillingham Reach. Later, forts were built above the town, among them Fort Luton (also a heritage site), Fort Pitt (later used as a hospital by Florence Nightingale; the site is now a girls' grammar school), Fort Horsted and Fort Clarence. Many still exist; some have been converted into housing; others have been demolished.

The town was also the location for several military barracks, most of which have now shut. Although the postal address of Brompton Barracks (the headquarters of the Royal Engineers) indicates Chatham as its location, Brompton was an entirely separate village within Gillingham parish.

Chatham became a market town in its own right in the 19th century, and a municipal borough in 1890. By 1831 its population had reached more than 16,000. By 1961 it had reached 48,800.

More recently, Chatham has been cited as the potential source for the somewhat derogatory term Chav. There may be some truth in this owing to the term Chav being a commonly used colloquialism around the area during the 1980s.

Communications

Roads

Chatham stood on Watling Street, the Roman road from London to the Kent Coast; the length of it from Chatham to Canterbury was turnpiked in 1730, to become the A2 main road in the 1920s. In 2005 the M2 motorway diverts all through traffic south of the Medway Towns. The central bus station for the towns is in Chatham, within walking distance of the railway station.

Railways

The railway came to Chatham in 1858: first when the East Kent Railway opened a line to Faversham; and later in the year when the short section to connect with the North Kent Line to London was opened. Chatham railway station is the main interchange for the Medway towns.

Part of the railway in what is now Chatham Historic Dockyard is still in operation, run by the North Kent Industrial Locomotive Society.

River Medway

The River Medway, apart from its use by warships to travel to and from the dockyard, was an important means of communication to the interior of Kent. Timber from the Weald for shipbuilding and agricultural produce were among the cargoes. Sun Pier in Chatham was one of many such along the river.

Sport

The town's Association Football club, Chatham Town F.C., plays in the Southern League Division One East.

Notable residents

Charles Dickens lived in the town as a boy, both in the Brook and in Ordnance Terrace before the railway station was built just opposite. He subsequently described it as the happiest period of his childhood, and eventually returned to the area in adulthood when he bought a house in nearby Gad's Hill. Others of note include the composer Percy Whitlock (1903-1946); the painter and killer Richard Dadd (1819-1887); and, in more modern times, the artist Billy Childish and the author and screenwriter Stel Pavlou.

Trivia

The town has recently become associated with chavs, a word taken from the Romany word chav meaning 'boy', describing a set of cheap fashions and taste associated with white, working-class young people, and commonly thought to be an abbreviation of "Chatham Average". Chatham is often referred to "Chavham".

Chatham sports a strong unsigned music scene, mainly thanks to the Post-Core Collective, Urban Fox Press and Rock 'N' Rant, and the movements they represent.

External links

Medway | Ports and harbours of England | Chatham (Kent) | Chatham

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