Residing along the aptly named River Medway resides the Medway towns. It is named the Medway towns due to its collective nature of small towns that are grouped up to form one collective area. Medway consists of many towns and villages ranging from the small Upnor featuring Upnor castle, to the large historic Rochester and Gillingham. Medway is renowned in Kent for its many historical people and locations.

Gad’s Hill in Higham belonged to the famous Charles Dickens,who purchased the house after having a strong fondness for Medway and Chatham growing up, where we see it referenced in his work such as the Eastgate House in The Pickwick Papers. Dicken’s influence from his time in Medway and youth in Chatham is displayed thoroughly throughout his work and small instances can always be traced back to his love for Medway. Notably, his love for Medway went as far as wishing to be buried at the Cathedral in Rochester but that wish was ungracefully denied in favour of London for the prestigious author.

Medway is famous in history for its housing of the Chatham Dockyard, established in 1567 and closed in 1984. It is defended on its approach by the small but defensive Upnor Castle, and the later created, Fort Amherst residing close on the hill nearby. There have been many great ships constructed at the dockyards with the likes including the grand HMS Victory which served at the decisive Battle of Trafalgar as Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship. There are also still a few moored at the Dockyard for tourists to visit. Medway holds in rich supply a vast stream of historical figures who were instrumental in Medway’s history or born in the Medway area. One was Thomas Waghorn, a naval officer most famous for his assistance in the revolutionary idea of creating a new route to India that avoided the arduous journey around Africa and instead utilised Egypt as a diversion route. He is honoured in Chatham with a towering statue that is always adorned with a traffic cone, courtesy of the locals.

A local point of interest for one of the larger centralised towns of Gillingham is the figure of William Adams, a naval navigator and most famous for being the first Englishman to enter the lands of Japan. In addition to the great feat of fighting the Spanish Armada alongside Sir Francis Drake, in Japan he rose to become an influential figure to the Shogun and became a samurai in a strange moment of history.

The Medway towns continue seemingly endlessly with these quirks of history with notable people and places appearing to appear infinitely with no shortage and to recount them would be a task too great for one. One could go on about the Cathedral at Rochester, the Raid on the Medway, the wealth created along the river through agricultural strides and the great thinkers and artists born and nurtured from this small group of towns. A simple dip into this historical region would result in endless intrigue and would be of great interest to any avid history buff.