Chatham

Chatham is a town located within the Medway unitary authority, in North Kent, in South East England.

The town developed around Chatham Dockyard and several Army barracks, together with 19th-century forts which provided a defensive shield for the dockyard. The Corps of Royal Engineers is still based in Chatham at Brompton Barracks.

The Dockyard closed in 1984, but the remaining major naval buildings are an attraction for a flourishing tourist industry. Following closure, part of the site was developed as a commercial port, other parts were redeveloped for business and residential use, and part was used as the Chatham Historic Dockyard museum. Its attractions include the submarine HMS Ocelot.

The town has important road links and the railway and bus stations are the main interchanges for the area. It is the administrative headquarters of Medway unitary authority, as well as its principal shopping centre.

History

The name Chatham was first recorded as Cetham in 880. The Domesday Book records the place as Ceteham.

Most books explain this name as a British root ceto (like Welsh coed), plus Old English ham, meaning a forest settlement. The river-valley site of Chatham is, however, more consistent with cet being an Old English survival of the element catu, that was common in Roman-era names and meant 'basin' or 'valley'.

The A2 road passes by Chatham along the line of the ancient Celtic route. It was paved by the Romans, and named Watling Street by the Anglo-Saxons. Among archaeological finds here have been the remains of a Roman-era cemetery.

Chatham was long a small village on the banks of the river. By the 16th century, warships were being moored at Jillingham water (Gillingham), because of its strategic sheltered location between London and the Continent. It was established as a Royal Dockyard by Queen Elizabeth I in 1568, and most of the dockyard lies within Gillingham. Initially a refitting base, it became a shipbuilding yard; from then until the late 19th century, further expansion of the yard took place. In its time, many thousands of men were employed at the dockyard, and many hundreds of vessels were launched there, including HMS Victory, which was built there in the 1760s. After World War I, many submarines were also built in Chatham Dockyard.

Looking from the river at Sun Pier along the Great Barrier Ditch, to the Gun Platforms at Fort Amherst

In addition to the dockyard, defensive fortifications were built to protect it from attack. Upnor Castle had been built in 1567, but had proved ineffectual; the Dutch raid on the Medway in 1667 showed that more defences were required. The fortifications, which became more elaborate as the threat of invasion grew, were begun in 1756 as a complex across the neck of the peninsula formed by the bend in the River Medway, and included Fort Amherst. The threat of a land-based attack from the south during the 19th century led to the construction of more forts.

The second phase of fort-building (1806–1819) included Fort Pitt (later used as a hospital and the site of the first Army Medical School). The 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom ordered, inter alia, a third outer ring of forts: these included Fort Luton, Fort Bridgewood, and Fort Borstal.

These fortifications all required military personnel to man them and Army barracks to house those men. These included Kitchener Barracks (c 1750–1780), the Royal Marine Barracks (c 1780), Brompton Artillery Barracks (1806) and Melville Barracks (opened 1820 as a Naval hospital, RM barracks from 1905).[7] H.M.S. Collingwood and H.M.S. Pembroke were both naval barracks.

In response to the huge manpower needs, the village of Chatham and other nearby villages and towns grew commensurately. Trams, and later buses, linked those places to bring in the workforce. The area between the High Street and Luton village illustrates part of that growth, with its many streets of Victorian terraces.

The importance of Chatham dockyard gradually declined as Britain's naval resources were reduced or moved to other locations, and eventually, in 1984, it was closed completely. The dockyard buildings were preserved as the historic site Chatham Historic Dockyard (operated by Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust), which was under consideration as a World Heritage Site the site is being used for other purposes. Part of the St Mary's Island section is now used as a marina, and the remainder is being developed for housing, commercial and other uses, branded as "Chatham Maritime".