Rochester is a large town in Kent, at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (50 km) from London. With Chatham, Gillingham, Strood and a number of outlying villages it makes up the Borough of Medway.

1 About the town
2 History
- 2.1 Etymology
3 Rochester Airport
4 See also
5 External links
6 References

[edit] About the town

The town is home to a number of important historic buildings, the most prominent of which are Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral. Many of the buildings in the town centre date from the 18th century or as early as the 14th century.

Rochester has long been a city but was accidentally stripped of its centuries-old city status in 1998 through local government reorganisation. This was not noticed by Medway Council until 2002; it has since written to the Queen asking for city status to be conferred again.

The town was for many years the favourite of Charles Dickens who lived nearby at Gad's Hill, Higham, and who based many of his novels in the area. Descriptions of the town appear in Pickwick Papers , Great Expectations and lightly fictionalised as Cloisterham in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This link is celebrated in Rochester's Dickens Festival each June. The 16th-century red-brick Eastgate House once housed the town's museum. In the 1980s the museum was moved further west to the Guildhall so that Eastgate House could become the Charles Dickens Centre.

In the same decade the High Street was redecorated with Victorian-style street lights and hanging flower baskets to give it a more welcoming atmosphere. The town also has revived the annual Sweeps' Festival, which has ancient roots relating to the Green Man, and is celebrated by a large gathering of morris dance sides.

The Dickens Centre was ultimately unprofitable and shut in November 2004. Medway Council's Cabinet agreed proposals for the restoration and development of Eastgate House as a major cultural and tourist facility, and for the project to be recognised as a key cultural regeneration project on 7 November 2006 [1].

A new library is now being built alongside the Adult Education Centre, Eastgate. This will enable the register office to move from Maidstone Road, Chatham to the Corn Exchange in Rochester High Street (where the library is now housed). According to a report presented to Medway Council's community services overview and scrutiny committee on 28 March 2006, the new library will be open "in late summer" (2006)[2]

Rochester has for centuries been of great strategic importance through its position near the confluence of the Thames and the Medway. Its castle was built to guard the river crossing, and the Royal Dockyard at Chatham was the key to the Royal Navy's long period of supremacy. The town is surrounded by a circle of fortresses — Forts Amherst, Luton, Borstal, Pitt, Clarence, Delce and others — built during the Napoleonic wars and in the 1860s. During World War II the Short Brothers' aircraft company manufactured flying boats at its "sea-plane" factory on the River Medway not far from Rochester Castle. However, the decline in naval power and in shipbuilding in general led to the Navy abandoning the shipyards and the demise of much of the marine industry in and around the town. Rochester and its neighbouring communities were hit hard by this and have experienced a painful adjustment to a post-industrial economy, with much social deprivation and unemployment resulting.

Rochester and its neighbours, Chatham and Gillingham, form a single large urban area known as the Medway Towns with a population of about 250,000. However, Rochester has always governed land on the other side of the Medway in Strood, and in recent times included the parishes of Cuxton, Halling and Cliffe, and the Hoo Peninsula. Watling Street passes through the town, and to the south the River Medway is bridged by the M2 motorway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

It was the setting for the 1965 television film The War Game. ^{[citation needed]}

The model and actress Kelly Brook went to Thomas Aveling School, Rochester.

The University College for the Creative Arts can be found on the Rochester-Chatham border.

[edit] History

Pre-Roman: Evidence of Neolithic settlement nearby at Kit's Coty House. Belgic remains were found in 1961 by R E Chaplin under the Roman levels. Coin moulds suggest that this was a centre of some importance.
AD 43: Romans found a fortified town by a bridge and called it Durobrivae (one theory). Alternatively, Aulus Plautius set up a small fort, which was not needed long, as Kent was soon settled. The Roman settlement provides us with the present High Street and Northgate/Boley Hill.
190+: Systematic earthen fortifications were established.
225+: This was replaced by stone, which is still extant. There is evidence that the Romans bridged the river at the same point as the present bridge, and constructed a causeway 14ft wide, over the marshy ground the Strood Side of the river.
410–604: Tradition states that Rochester was continuously occupied by Celts, Jutes and/or Saxons. The Jutish brothers Hengist and Horsa landed at Ebbsfleet in AD 449, and defeated the Britons at Aylesford.

Rochester Cathedral viewed from the Castle. Note the cleaning and restoration work)

Image:Rochester castlemedway.jpg

604: Augustine of Canterbury sends Justus to found a cathedral at Rochester, 42ft high and 28ft wide. The apse is marked in the present cathedral. This was the second see after Canterbury.
604: The King's School is founded.
676: Rochester was sacked by Æthelred of Mercia.
842: Sacked by the Danes.
877: Alfred of Wessex orders the building of ships to fight the Danes. This could be the start of Medway's military shipbuilding history.
884: Under siege from the Danes again.
930: Rochester has a right to mint coins.

All this is evidence of an important and thriving continuous civic life.

1077: Gundulf is consecrated bishop.
1080: Gundulf commences the new cathedral, on the site between the Roman wall and Watling Street, over the previous cathedral.
1087: Gundulf starts building the Norman castle. Its curtain wall follow Roman walls, and its keep is 113ft high, 70ft × 70ft in breadth.
1130: The Norman cathedral is complete.
1215: Besieged by King John. It fell on November 30.
1227: Completion of Early English quire at the cathedral.
1264: City attacked by Simon de Montfort.
1343: Central tower at cathedral raised.
1461: The first mayor.
1470: The great window at the cathedral is built.

Rochester Cathedral is one of England's smaller cathedrals, yet it demonstrates all styles of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.

1504–1535: St John Fisher, bishop. 1535 appointed cardinal and executed by Henry VIII because he refused to sanction the divorce of Catherine of Aragon.
1547–1550: Nicholas Ridley, bishop. 1554 executed by Queen Mary for demands of faith: a Protestant martyr.
1559: Construction of Upnor Castle to protect Chatham Dockyard. Upnor is an estuarine water castle.
1560: Sir Francis Drake born in Devon. At the age of six he moved to Upchurch where his father was made vicar.
20 May 1660: Sir Francis Clarke entertained King Charles II on the eve of his restoration to the throne. His home, Restoration House, in Crow Lane, was used as the basis of Satis House in Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens.
December 1689: King James II spent his last night as king at Abdication House in the High Street, now the Lloyds TSB bank.
11 June 1667: Dutch Raid on the Medway. In the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch under de Ruijter broke through the chain at Upnor and sailed to Rochester Bridge capturing and firing the English fleet. Samuel Pepys, who was responsible at the Navy Board, describes the last successful invasion of British soil in his diaries. Trophies from the raid are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
1687: Construction of the Guildhall, the ceiling being given by Sir Cloudesley Shovell.
1701: Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, the famous boys' grammar school, was founded.
1765: HMS Victory was launched in neighbouring Chatham. It became flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Trafalgar.
1974: The municipal borough and city of Rochester merged with the borough of Chatham and part of the Strood Rural District including the Hoo Peninsula. The resulting district was the Borough of Medway. It was later renamed Rochester-upon-Medway, and the city status transferred to the entire borough.
1998: the council merged with Gillingham and Chatham to form the Medway unitary authority, consequentially losing its city status [3].

[edit] Etymology

The name for the city of Rochester comes from the Latin word Castra which is present in many other cities that were once Roman camps (e.g. Chester)

[edit] Rochester Airport

Rochester City Council purchased the land at Rochester Airfield in September 1933 from the landowner as the site for a municipal airport. One month later Short brothers, who had started building aircraft in 1909 on the Isle of Sheppey, asked for permission to lease the land for test flying and thus began the privileged relationship between the local authority and the aviation industry.

In 1934-5 Short brothers took over the Rochester Airport site when they moved some of their personnel from the existing seaplane works. The inaugural flight into Rochester was from Gravesend, John Parker flying their Shorts Scion G-ACJI. It was powered by a Pobjoy engine.

Pobjoy Air Motors Ltd moved to Rochester at the same time to be closer to Short brothers to whom they were contracted for production of aircraft engines for the Short's Scion. Financial difficulties led to a capital investment by Shorts in Pobjoy and the eventual assimilation of Pobjoy.

The Air Ministry licensed Short Brothers in 1936 to design and build a four-engined high wing monoplane. An initial half scale model S3, serial M4, flew at Rochester on 19th September 1938. The first prototype S29 came out of its hangar on May 14 1939. The flight was perfect but the landing gear collapsed on touch down. Later developments led to the first 4-engined bomber to serve in the RAF. The Shorts S29 Stirling.

In 1938 No 23 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School (No 26 group RAF) came to Rochester. No 1 hangar was built for the RAF and for the Navy and to house Avro tutors. The school was managed by Shorts and they still exist fronting the Maidstone Road.

The civilian services started with flights from Rochester to Southend in June 1934 at a cost of 12 shillings (60p) for the return trip. Short brothers continued to build seaplanes on the Esplanade at Rochester supplying the growing market for flying boats. The name "Empire" and "Sunderland" flying boats will always remain one of the important contribution made by Medway to British Aviation.

Rochester airport was bombed heavily during the war by a wing of Dornier 17s on August 15th 1940. Many 100lb bombs scored hits on the factory and the runways. Spitfires of 54 squadron from Hornchurch successfully intercepted some of the marauders. Stirling production was put back by at least a year and in the end was dispersed to other parts of the country as well as Rochester.

Shorts concentrated their work in Belfast leaving the Medway towns in 1946. For six years 1947-53 the RAF 24 Elementary Flying School Training School was transferred to Rochester and was renamed "Reserve Flying School". The unit was disbanded in 1953. Previous employees of Shorts joined the Shorts gliding club at Rochester and developed a prototype aircraft called the "Nimbus", in an attempt to keep aircraft production at Rochester.

Services to and from the continent expanded in the 1950's and 60's using Dakotas and Doves but with stringent requirement of the CAA operators had to re-locate from Rochester.

In 1979 the lease reverted to the council and after giving thorough consideration to closing the airport GEC comprising Marconi and instrument makers Elliot Automation decided to take over management of the airport maintaining 2 runways as grass whilst releasing some land for light industrial expansion.

In 1999 a group of aviators at Rochester formed a company dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the long tradition of aviation at Rochester Airport, its service to the local community and for its longer term preservation. The historic site of Rochester Airport was saved from closure for the short term by the unstinting efforts of this group of local business people, in the face of extreme pressure by the Labour Controlled Local Council to re-zone the Airport site as Industrial Development land. Rochester Airport PLC, proposed to continue operation of the airport even though the timescale given for takeover was miniscule. They want to continue, as far as possible, the existing services provided for private, business and emergency aviation services and enhance them to bring increased economic benefit to Medway, its surrounding area, its businesses and its community. Significant voluntary work has contributed to the financial viability of Rochester Airport which has been operated on a care and maintenance basis in light of the difficulty in securing a proper lease. The Airport now has a five year lease, outside of the Landlord & Tenant act 1954, and enter a crucial phase of negotiation with Medway Council.

Since 2004 the Airfield operators have lost the initial enthusiasm for running the airfield. This is due in part by grand thoughts of running a business airfield whereas Rochester is really a community airfield. Sadly this has meant a decline in the support and voluntary help given by enthusiasts.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Image:Commons-logo.svg	Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rochester, Kent

[edit] References

Rochester, The evolution of the City. Ronald Marsh. 1974 p&p Medway Borough Council.
City of Rochester upon Medway Visitors Guide 1996.
Rochester Cathedral, Pitkins Guide ISBN 0-85372-669-8
The Dutch Raid, published by the City of Rochester Society 1998.
Medway News

view • talk • edit</span> The unitary authority of Medway in Kent, South East England with its suburbs, villages, towns and parishes:
Allhallows • Borstal • Brompton • Chatham • Chattenden • Cliffe-at-Hoo • Cliffe and Cliffe Woods • Cliffe Woods • Cooling • Cuxton • Frindsbury • Frindsbury Extra • Gillingham • Halling • Hempstead • High Halstow • Hoo St Werburgh • Isle of Grain • Lordswood • Luton • Park Wood • Rochester • Rainham • Rainham Mark • St Mary Hoo • St Mary's Island • Stoke • Strood • Twydall • Upchurch • Upnor • Wainscott • Walderslade • Wigmore • Wouldham
The borough of Medway List of places in Kent

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