The Historic Dockyard Chatham is a maritime museum on part of the site of the former royal/naval dockyard at Chatham in Kent, South East England.
Chatham Dockyard covered 400 acres (1.6 km²) and was one of the Royal Navy's main facilities for several hundred years until it was closed in 1984. After closure the dockyard was divided into three sections. The easternmost basin was handed over to Medway Ports and is now a commercial port, although the landowner plans to close it in 2025 [1] . Another slice was converted into a mixed commercial, residential and leisure development. 80 acres (324,000 m²), comprising the 18th-century core of the site, was transferred to a charity called the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and is now open as a visitor attraction. It claims to be the world’s most complete dockyard of the age of sail. [2]
The attraction has seven main elements:
Workers at the dockyard performed eight years of restoration work on the MV Havengore, the ceremonial vessel that carried the body of Winston Churchill during his state funeral. In addition the dockyard acted as custodian of artefacts, masts and rigging from the Cutty Sark and the Medway Queen , while their hulls were being restored elsewhere.
The site is also home to a dockyard railway that has a diverse collection of locomotives and rolling stock, some of which can be seen in operation throughout the year.
Builder | Wheel arrangement | Number and name | Build date | Notes | Photograph |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns | 0-4-0ST | 7042 Ajax | 1941 | Operational, boiler ticket expires in 2022. Has spent all of its life at Chatham Dockyard | |
Andrew Barclay | 0-4-0ST | 2220 Invicta | 1946 | Undergoing restoration. Spent all of its working life at Chatham Dockyard. Listed for sale in 2022. | |
Builder | Wheel arrangement | Number and name | Build date | Notes | Photograph |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Andrew Barclay | 0-4-0DM | 357/WD42 Overlord | 1941 | Operational. Often on display in the military exhibition. | |
F.C. Hibberd | 4wDM | 3738 Rochester Castle | 1955 | Operational, has spent all of its life at Chatham Dockyard. | |
Drewry | 0-4-0DM | 2503 Thalia | 1954 | Operational |
The Historic Dockyard Chatham spans 80 acres, has over 100 buildings and structures dating from the Georgian and Victorian periods to the present day, thus making it an attractive location for period filming over the years.
Some of the shows/films to have used the facilities and locations at Chatham Dockyard are: [9]
In 2020, some scenes for Belgravia (TV series) were filmed at the dockyard. [10]
Chatham is a town located within the Medway unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Kent, England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Gillingham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham.
Medway is borough and unitary authority area in Kent, South East England. It had a population of 278,016 in 2019. The unitary authority was formed in 1998, when the boroughs of Rochester-upon-Medway and Gillingham were merged to form Medway Towns. The borough is governed by Medway Council, a unitary authority which is independent of Kent County Council, but remains part of the ceremonial county of Kent.
A maritime museum is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water. A subcategory of maritime museums are naval museums, which focus on navies and the military use of the sea.
Woolwich Dockyard was an English naval dockyard along the river Thames at Woolwich in north-west Kent, where many ships were built from the early 16th century until the late 19th century. William Camden called it 'the Mother Dock of all England'. By virtue of the size and quantity of vessels built there, Woolwich Dockyard is described as having been 'among the most important shipyards of seventeenth-century Europe'. During the Age of Sail, the yard continued to be used for shipbuilding and repair work more or less consistently; in the 1830s a specialist factory within the dockyard oversaw the introduction of steam power for ships of the Royal Navy. At its largest extent it filled a 56-acre site north of Woolwich Church Street, between Warspite Road and New Ferry Approach; 19th-century naval vessels were fast outgrowing the yard, however, and it eventually closed in 1869. The former dockyard area is now partly residential, partly industrial, with remnants of its historic past having been restored.
HMS Ocelot (S17) is an Oberon-class diesel-electric submarine which was operated by the Royal Navy.
Gillingham is a town in the unitary authority area of Medway in the ceremonial county of Kent, England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham. It is also the largest town in the borough of Medway.
Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the River Medway in Kent. Established in Chatham in the mid-16th century, the dockyard subsequently expanded into neighbouring Gillingham.
Fort Amherst, in Medway, South East England, was constructed in 1756 at the southern end of the Brompton lines of defence to protect the southeastern approaches to Chatham Dockyard and the River Medway against a French invasion. Fort Amherst is now open as a visitor attraction throughout the year with tours provided through the tunnel complex
Lower Upnor and Upper Upnor are two small villages in Medway, Kent, England. They are in the parish of Frindsbury Extra on the western bank of the River Medway. Today the two villages are mainly residential and a centre for small craft moored on the river, but Upnor Castle is a preserved monument, part of the river defences from the sixteenth century.
The PS Medway Queen is a paddle driven steamship, the only mobile estuary paddle steamer left in the United Kingdom. She was one of the "little ships of Dunkirk", making a record seven trips and rescuing 7,000 men in the evacuation of Dunkirk.
HMS Cavalier is a retired C-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was laid down by J. Samuel White and Company at East Cowes on 28 March 1943, launched on 7 April 1944, and commissioned on 22 November 1944. She served in World War II and in various commissions in the Far East until she was decommissioned in 1972. After decommissioning she was preserved as a museum ship and currently resides at Chatham Historic Dockyard.
His Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy. Portsmouth Naval Base is part of the city of Portsmouth; it is located on the eastern shore of Portsmouth Harbour, north of the Solent and the Isle of Wight. For centuries it was officially known as HM Dockyard, Portsmouth: as a Royal Dockyard, Portsmouth functioned primarily as a state-owned facility for building, repairing and maintaining warships; for a time it was the largest industrial site in the world.
HMS President is a retired Flower-class Q-ship that was launched in 1918. She was renamed HMS President in 1922 and moored permanently on the Thames as a Royal Navy Reserve drill ship. In 1982 she was sold to private owners and, having changed hands twice, served as a venue for conferences and functions as well as the offices for a number of media companies. She has been moved to Chatham on the Medway in Kent since 2016, but is due to return to the capital. She had the suffix "(1918)" added to her name in order to distinguish her from HMS President, the Royal Naval Reserve base in St Katharine Docks. She is one of the last three surviving Royal Navy warships of the First World War. She is also the sole representative of the first type of purpose built anti-submarine vessels, and is the ancestor of World War II convoy escort sloops, which evolved into modern anti-submarine frigates.
His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. The largest naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth, England.
The Universities at Medway is a tri-partite collaboration of the University of Greenwich, the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University on a single campus in Chatham, Medway in South East England.
John H Amos is a paddlewheel tugboat built in Scotland in 1931. The last paddlewheel tug built for private owners, now owned by the Medway Maritime Trust. She is one of only two surviving British-built paddle tugs, the other being Eppleton Hall preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California.
Sheerness Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the Sheerness peninsula, at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent. It was opened in the 1660s and closed in 1960.
Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and many significant events and ships have been associated with it.
HMS Undaunted was a wooden screw frigate, the fifth ship of the name to serve in the Royal Navy.
Edward Holl was an architect to the Navy Board, then later Surveyor of Buildings to the Board of Admiralty of the Royal Navy. His father is presumed to be Edward Holl, a stonemason from Beccles in Suffolk, who died in January 1816.
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