Gillingham: The Medway Towns and Naval Heritage
Gillingham merges so thoroughly with Chatham and Rochester that it is difficult to say where one ends and another begins. The Medway Towns form a continuous urban area of over 280,000 people along the river. Gillingham's contribution to that total is around 101,000. The town's identity is inseparable from the Royal Dockyard at Chatham next door, which built and repaired warships from 1567 until its closure in 1984. Thousands of Gillingham residents worked in the yard. The Historic Dockyard is now a museum and film location, but the loss of the yard shaped the Medway economy for a generation.
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Gillingham merges so thoroughly with Chatham and Rochester that it is difficult to say where one ends and another begins. The Medway Towns form a continuous urban area of over 280,000 people along the river. Gillingham's contribution to that total is around 101,000. The town's identity is inseparable from the Royal Dockyard at Chatham next door, which built and repaired warships from 1567 until its closure in 1984. Thousands of Gillingham residents worked in the yard. The Historic Dockyard is now a museum and film location, but the loss of the yard shaped the Medway economy for a generation.
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