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Rochester, Kent

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Rochester
Rochester Cathedral viewed from the Castle Gardens
PopulationExpression error: "27,000 (2001 Census)" must be numeric
OS grid referenceTQ739684
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townROCHESTER
Postcode districtME1, ME2
Dialling code01634
PoliceKent
FireKent
AmbulanceSouth East Coast
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Kent

Rochester is a town within the unitary authority area of Medway in South East England. It is part of the ceremonial county of Kent and is located at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (48 km) from London. The town is known for its cathedral and castle, and for an epic siege in 1215. [1] Rochester, together with neighbouring Chatham, Gillingham, Strood and a number of outlying villages makes up the Medway unitary authority area.

History

Toponymy

The Romano-British name for Rochester was Durobrivæ. This is commonly translated as 'stronghold by the bridge' or 'stronghold by the bridges'.[2] This could have been a Belgic Settlement or oppidum, but there was no bridge in AD 43.[3] It was also known as Durobrovum and Durobrivis, which could be a Latinisation of the British word 'Dourbruf' meaning swiftstream[4]

It is recorded as Durobrivis c.730 and Dorobrevis in 844.[2] It was pronounced as 'Robrivis. Bede copied down this name, c730, mistaking its meaning as Hrofi's fortified camp (OE Hrofes cæster). From this we get c730 Hrofæscæstre, 811 Hrofescester, 1086 Rovescester, 1610 Rochester.[2]

As the name for the city of Rochester contains the Latin word 'castra', which is present in the names of many cities that were once Roman camps (e.g. Chester Latin 'Deva'), it is assumed that Rochester was a fortified Roman town, but no evidence has been found of such fort. The Roman street pattern suggest that it was a line of shops and houses built alongside a road, and systematic fortification did not take place until after AD 175.[3]

The Latinised adjective 'Roffensis' refers to Rochester.[4]

Pre Roman

  • 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.

Roman

  • AD 43: The Romans arrived and called the settlement Durobrivae. On the strength of this name alone, one theory suggests that there was a 'fortified town by a bridge'. There was no bridge when the Romans arrived, and no fort has been discovered by archaeologists. 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.[3] A bridge was built. There is evidence that the Romans bridged the river at the same point as the present bridge. They constructed a substantial causeway, 14 ft wide, over the marshy ground on the Strood Side of the river, from the river to the present day Angel Corner.[3]
  • 190+: Systematic earthen fortifications were established.
  • 225+: These were replaced by stone, which are still extant.
  • 427 Romans leave Britain

Kentish Kings

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

Norman

  • 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 113 ft high, 70 ft × 70 ft in breadth.
  • 1130: The Norman cathedral is complete.

Middle Ages

  • 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.[5]

Tudor and Stuart

Rochester Guildhall on the High Street.

Georgian and Victorian

Rochester Corn Exchange on the High Street.
  • 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.
  • 1850: Thomas Aveling financed by his father in law bought a small millwrighting shop in Edwards yard, where he set up a business producing and repairing agricultural plant.[5]
  • 1861: Thomas Aveling and Richard Porter move to Strood and establish Aveling & Porter, the engineering company which was to become the largest manufacturer of agricultural machines and steam rollers in the country.Of the 12,700 steam engines which they made, no fewer than 8,600 of them were steam rollers.[5][7]

20th and 21st centuries

  • 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. The outgoing council chose not to appoint ceremonial "Charter Trustees" to continue to represent the historic Rochester area, causing Rochester to lose its city status.[8]
  • The decision is irrevocable, because there no longer exists an entity under the old charter who could appoint Charter Trustees. The main option available is to petition the Queen for new letters patent declaring the whole of Medway to be a city, but it is far from certain this could occur anytime soon.

Military history

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, as part of Medway, is surrounded by two circle of fortresses; the inner line of forts built during the Napoleonic wars are; Fort Clarence, Fort Pitt, Fort Amherst and Fort Gillingham. The outer line of "Palmerston" forts was built during 1860s in light of the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom report, these consisted of Fort Borstal, Fort Bridgewood, Fort Luton, and Twydall Redoubts, with 2 forts on islands in the Medway; Fort Hoo and Fort Darnet.

During the First World War the Short Brothers' aircraft company manufactured the first plane to launch a torpedo,the Short Admiralty Type 184, and during the Second World War manufactured the first four-engined bomber, the Stirling, and flying boats at its seaplane factory on the River Medway not far from Rochester Castle.

The decline in naval power and in shipbuilding in general led to the government abandoning the shipyard at Chatham in 1984, and the subsequent demise of much of the marine industry. 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. On the closure of Chatham Dockyard the area saw an unprecedented surge in unemployment to 15.9%. This dropped to 3.5% in 2004.

Governance

Civic history

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. This was known as Strood Intra; before 1835 it was about 100 yards wide and stretched to Gun Lane. In the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act the boundaries were extended to include more of Strood and Frindsbury, and part of Chatham known as Chatham Intra. In 1974, Rochester City Council was abolished and superseded by Medway Borough Council, which also included the parishes of Cuxton, Halling and Cliffe, and the Hoo Peninsula. In 1979 the borough became Rochester-upon-Medway.

Rochester had 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.

Watling Street passes through the town, and to the south the River Medway is bridged by the M2 motorway and High Speed 1.

Parishes

There were three parishes within the city of Rochester, St Margaret's, St Nicholas' and the Cathedral.[9]

Geography

The M2 motorway and High Speed 1 crossing the Medway, as viewed from Ranscombe Farm, Cuxton. Borstal can be seen on the far bank.

The town is home to a number of important historic buildings, the most prominent of which are the Guildhall, the Corn Exchange, Restoration House, Eastgate House, 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.

Economy

Rochester Airport

Main article: Rochester Airport, England

Rochester City Council bought 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.

Rochester station building. The railway passes at first floor level on a viaduct.

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 Short Scion G-ACJI.

In 1979 the lease reverted to the council. After giving thorough consideration to closing the airport, GEC (then comprising Marconi and instrument makers Elliot Automation) decided to take over management of the airport. It maintained two grass runways while releasing some land for light industrial expansion.

Culture

Dickens

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. Restoration house located on Crow Lane was the house on which Charles Dickens based Miss Havisham's (from Great Expectations) house, Satis House. This link is celebrated in Rochester's Dickens Festival each June in the Summer Dickens Festival and December with the Dickensian Christmas Festival. 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 festival starts with the awakening of the Jack in the Green ceremony, atop Bluebell Hill at sunrise on May 1st.[10]

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[11]

Library

A new library was 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 was housed). As mentioned in a report presented to Medway Council's community services overview and scrutiny committee on 28 March 2006, the new library opened in late summer (2006)[12]

Media

Rochester is the setting of the controversial 1965 Peter Watkins television film The War Game, which depicts the town's destruction by a nuclear missile. [13]. The opening sequence was shot in Chatham Town Hall, but the credits particularly thank the people of Dover, Gravesend and Tonbridge.

Rochester Castle from across the Medway. Engraving from image by G.F. Sargent c1836.

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

Billy Childish, artist, author, poet, photographer and co-founder of the art movement Stuckism lives nearby in Chatham and there is also a growing music scene of Medway groups, including Kid Harpoon and Lupen Crook

The University College for the Creative Arts, formerly the Kent Institute of Art & Design, can be found on the Rochester-Chatham border.

Sport

The main sports played in the town are cricket with many teams playing in the Kent Cricket League, and football, with teams competing in the Rochester & District Football League on a Saturday and the Medway Messenger Sunday Football League. Rochester F.C. were one of the oldest football clubs but have been defunct for many decades. Nearby Gillingham F.C. are seen to represent the Medway area in football.

Speedway was staged a track in City Way. This opened in 1932. Proposals for a revival in the early 1970s did not materialise and the Rochester Bombers became the Romford Bombers.

See also

References

  1. ^ English Heritage Rochester Castle
  2. ^ a b c The Place names of Kent. Judith Glover.1976 Batsford. 1982 Meresborough Books. ISBN 0905270 614
  3. ^ a b c d Rochester, The evolution of the City. Ronald Marsh. 1974 p&p Medway Borough Council.
  4. ^ a b Kelly's Directory of Rochester 1951.
  5. ^ a b c d e Rochester, The past 2000 years, Published Privately City of Rochester Society 1999.
  6. ^ *The Dutch Raid, published by the City of Rochester Society 1998.
  7. ^ *Discovering Traction Engines, - Harold Bonnett - Shire Publications (1975) - ISBN 0-85263-318-1
  8. ^ http://www.medway.gov.uk/orc20030304r-5.pdf?file=10698
  9. ^ C Humpherey-Smith, The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers
  10. ^ *City of Rochester upon Medway Visitors Guide 1996.
  11. ^ [1].
  12. ^ [2]
  13. ^ http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/wargamethe/wargamethe.htm

Further reading

  • Rochester Cathedral, Pitkins Guide ISBN 0-85372-669-8
  • Medway News

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rochester, Kent.
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