2024-Chatham & Rochester

CHATHAM DOCKYARD & ROCHESTER

JULY 2024

Just after 08:30hrs on a rainy 9 July, 41 members and friends boarded Harding’s coach in Oxted and Limpsfield for our annual outing.

This time we headed for The Historic Dockyard at Chatham: a large site of 80 acres, carved from the larger 400 acre Royal Naval Dockyard, which once sprawled along the banks of the Medway estuary. The site, now managed by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, comprises the eighteenth century core of the original dockyard closed by the Royal Navy in 1984.

We were given free time to investigate the many and diverse attractions ranging from the ‘Command of the Oceans’ with the timbers of HMS Namur providing the centrepiece of the exhibition, the lifeboat collection, the Royal Dockyard museum, three former warships: HMS Gannet a Victorian steam/sail Royal Naval cutter, HMS Cavalier a 1944 destroyer and for those most flexible HMS Ocelot a 1962 submarine and the last warship to be built at Chatham.  We came together for a group booking at the ropemaking shed not only to have a hands-on demonstration on how traditional ropes were made but also to see the operation of the original machinery still used in commercial ropemaking in the long shed, which continues to produce traditional ropes for customers worldwide.

A small group decided to remain at Chatham for the day whist the remainder took the coach to Rochester where the majority were divided into two sub-groups for pre-arranged guided tours of Rochester. The cathedral is the oldest in Britain at 604AD and is the site of where Henry VIII first set eyes on Catherine of Aragon.  The Norman Castle dominates the Medway crossing and of course there are the many Dickens associations. These include Restoration House, used in Dickens’ novel ‘Great Expectations’ as the home of Estella and Miss Havisham, The Six Poor Travellers House, immortalised by the author in a Christmas short story and Eastgate House that featured in many works of Dickens and in the gardens we could see the author's chalet that was once sited at his home at Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent.

Others were free to wander this fascinating city and some explored the Huguenot Museum dedicated to the influx of Huguenots in the late 17th century fleeing French persecution.

At the end of the day the coach gathered everyone together at about 5pm arriving back in Oxted at 6pm.