Glimpses of life in an urban conurbation
Medway Maritime Hospital is vast. It serves a population of 360,000 people in the Medway towns and parts of Swale. The hospital employs about 3,000 people, and has an annual budget of more than £100 million. It is appropriate that Medway Hospital inserted the Maritime in its title when it expanded exponentially in the late […]
Continue ReadingIn the days when manufacturers manufactured in Medway, there was work for many — and not just engineers and artisans. Some of the more intricate work was judged as suitable for — gasp — women workers. It gave the young ladies something to do before they got married and the management didn’t have to pay […]
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Common by name, common by nature. Corporation Street in Rochester was formed from an ancient area known as The Common — a slum area where animals had been kept on their journey to the market. It was a pretty grubby place and would have featured all the leisure activities (vices, the Victorians would have said) […]
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Two Edwardian chaps sit in Rochester Castle Gardens, with the elegant splendour of Castle Hill as a backdrop. They make an odd couple on a park bench. The bowler-hatted gent looks cheerful, as English as roast beef and rather like Sherlock Holmes’s companion, Dr Watson. The younger man looks European, rather haughty, pre-occupied, somewhat out […]
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The history of Rochester Bridge is as long and meandering as the river it crosses. The bridge and the Medway are the main reasons Rochester exists and they are chronicled elsewhere on this website. Here, however, is a tragic tale that happened under the bridge in the last years of King George III’s long reign. […]
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This is the sort of picture where you can smell the newly mown grass, feel the sun on your back and taste the cheese sandwiches and beer in the shade of the canvas marquee. All in all, it’s a wonderfully evocative picture. It shows the scene, about 1951, when Borstal Cricket Club opened its lovely […]
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Rochester Castle Gardens retained its military air well after its battle days were over. The castle was subjected to three sieges in the Middle Ages, including one by King John, English history’s pantomime baddie, in 1215. It stood, in a mostly ruinous state, guarding the Medway until acquired by Rochester Corporation in the 1870s. Under […]
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His name was strange and unspellable in its many forms; he was MP for Rochester; a benefactor to the city; a naval hero; and, shipwrecked, he struggled ashore to be murdered by an islander. His death was mourned deeply by the Queen and led to calls for a better system of navigation. This is the […]
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You all know the amateur detectives in fiction. Miss Marple, the village busybody; Lord Peter Wimsey, the literary aristocrat; and Father Brown, the little Catholic priest who solved crimes and saved souls. Hoo St Werburgh had its own Father Brown — but the Rev Richard Jordan was more of a blood-and-thunder Anglican who stepped in […]
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A calm and clear morning on 26 November, 1914, gave no inkling of the tragedy about to befall the crew of HMS Bulwark. Witnesses spoke later of a slight haze on the horizon on the River Medway and silence — broken at just before 8am by a huge bang, a flash and a pall of smoke. […]
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