Chatham Dockyard

Chatham Dockyard lies beside the River Medway in Kent, where the Royal Navy once built and repaired its ships. Begun in the mid-16th century, it grew across the water into Gillingham until two-thirds of its 400 acres stood in that parish. For more than four centuries it launched over 500 vessels and employed ten thousand craftsmen at its peak. The yard closed in 1984, yet 84 acres survive as the Chatham Historic Dockyard. Its importance is recorded in words by Camden, Defoe and Dickens. Camden praised the fleet ready at a minute’s warning, while Defoe marvelled that a first-rate ship could be commissioned in three days. Dickens described twelve hundred men shaping iron hulls, their hammers ringing through the yard. Joseph Farington’s 1785 panorama still shows many of the same buildings visitors see today. Visitors walk past mast ponds and dry docks where galleys and later ironclads were fitted out. The ropery’s long storehouse and the officers’ residences line Anchor Wharf. Alongside lie the treadmill crane and the double dock rebuilt in the 17th century. The riverfront offers views of the Medway where careening once took place, linking the working yard to the anchorage below.