Chatham Dockyard

Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy dockyard on the River Medway in Kent, established in Chatham in the mid-sixteenth century when worsening relations with the Catholic countries of Europe after the Reformation created a need for additional defences. The yard later expanded into neighbouring Gillingham, and at its greatest extent in the early twentieth century two thirds of it lay in Gillingham. Over 414 years it provided more than 500 ships for the Royal Navy, employed over ten thousand skilled artisans at its height and covered 400 acres. It closed in 1984, and 84 acres of the Georgian dockyard are now run by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust as a visitor attraction.