About the town

a town is at home to a total of crucial historic buildings, the virtually all large of which are then Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral. Numerous of a buildings in the town centre date back the 18th century or when early as a 14th century.

Rochester has hanker been technically the city however was inadvertently stripped of its centuries-old city status in 1998 due to a local government reorganization. This was non found by Medway Council until 2002; it has since written to the Queen asking for city status to be conferred over again.

A town was for numerous years a favorite of Charles Dickens who lived nearby at Gad's Hill, Higham, and world health organization depending several of his novels in Rochester. This hyperlink is celebrated within Rochester's Dickens Festival both June. A 16th-century red-red-brick Eastgate Home it used to be that housed a town's museum. In the 1980s a museum was moved further west to the Guildhall then that Eastgate Home may get the Charles Dickens Centre.

In a equivalent decade the High Street was redecorated by using Victorian-style street lights and hanging flower baskets to give it the other welcoming atmosphere. A town as well has revived a annual Sweeps' Festival, which has ancient roots on to the Green Man, and is celebrated by the big gathering of morris dance sides.

A Dickens Centre was within the end unprofitable & shut for good in November 2004. a new have of Eastgate Home has non however been decided: a project to move the library there has been rejected.

Rochester has for centuries been of nifty strategical importance across its position touching a confluence of the Thames and the Medway. Its castle was built to guard a flow of any stream crossing, & a dockyard at Chatham was the key to the Royal Navy's long period of mastery. the town is surrounded by a circle of fortresses - Forts Amherst, Luton, Borstal, Pitt, Clarence, Delce and others - built during a Napoleonic wars and in the 1860s. In the period of World War II the Short Brothers' aircraft company manufactured flight boats at its manufacturing plant on the Medway shortly from either Rochester Castle. Still, a decline about naval power & around shipbuilding inside a main led to a Navy abandoning a shipyards & the dying of good deal of the marine industry in & around the town. Rochester & its neighboring communities were hit arduous by this & use had the painful adjustment to the post-industrial economy, by having lot social deprivation & unemployment following.

Rochester & its neighbours, Chatham and Gillingham, form a single big populated area referred to as a Medway Towns with a people of astir 250,000. Yet, Rochester has universally governed land on the other side of the Medway around Strood, and around recent days involved a parishes of Cuxton, Halling and Cliffe, and a Hoo Peninsula. Watling Street passes through a town, and in the south the Flow of any stream Medway is bridged per M2 motorway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Supermodel Kelly Brook went to school in Thomas Aveling School, Rochester.

The campus of the legendary art school, the University College for the Creative Arts also finds refuge in Rochester.

History

Pre-Roman: Grounds to believe of Neolithic settlement nearby at Kit's Coty. Belgic remains were uncovered within 1961 by R E Chaplin under a Roman levels. Coin moulds indicate that this was the centre of a select few importance. AD 43: Romans found the fortified town by the bridge & known as it Durobrivae (of these theory). Instead, Aulus Plautius set up a little fort, which wwhen non required hanker, as Kent was shortly settled. A Roman payout will bring america by using a present High Street & Northgate/Boley Hill. 190+: Systematic earthen fortifications were established. 225+: This was replaced by stone, which is still extant. There exists grounds to believe that a Romans bridged a flow of any stream at a equivalent point when a present bridge, & constructed a causeway 14ft wide, across a boggy ground the Strood Side of the flow of any stream. 410–604: Tradition states that Rochester was continuously occupied by Celts, Jutes and/or Saxons. A Jutish brothers Hengist and Horsa landed at Ebbsfleet in AD 449, and defeated a Britons at Aylesford. Jutish traditions were different from either a Saxons. 604: Augustine of Canterbury sends Justus to found the cathedral at Rochester, 42ft high & 28ft wide. A apsis is marked in the present cathedral. This was a 2nd view fallowing Canterbury. 676: Rochester was sacked by Ethelred of Mercia. 842: Sacked per Danes. 877: Alfred of Wessex orders a building of ships to fight the Danes. This can be a run of Medway's military shipbuilding history. 884: Under siege from either a Danes again. 930: Rochester has a perfect to mint coins. Wholly this is grounds to believe of an significant & thriving continuous civic life. 1077: Gundulf is consecrated bishop. 1080: Gundulf commences a newly cathedral, on the places between the Roman wall & Watling Street, over a former cathedral. 1087: Gundulf commences building the Norman castle. Its curtawithin wall watch Roman bulwarks, & its keep is 113ft high, 70ft × 70ft in breadth. 1130: The Norman cathedral is complete. 1215: Besieged by King John. It fell in November 30. 1227: Completion of Early English quire at the cathedral. 1264: City attacked by Simon de Montfort. 1343: Central tower at cathedral raised. 1461: The number one city manager. 1470: a outstanding window at the cathedral is built. Rochester Cathedral is one of England's little cathedrals, however it demonstrates tons styles of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. 1504–1535: St John Fisher, bishop. 1535 appointed cardinal & executed by Henry VIII because he refused to sanction the divorcement of Catherine of Aragon. 1547–1550: Nicholas Ridley, bishop. 1554 executed by Queen Mary for demands of faith: a Protestant martyr. 1559: Construction of Upnor Castle to protect Chatham Dockyard. Upnor is an estuarine a body of water castle. 1560: Sir Francis Drake born in Devon, was six & moved to Upchurch where his father was made vicar. 20 May 1660: Sir Francis Clarke entertained King Charles II on the eve of his restoration to the throne. His page, Restoration Home, withinside Crow Lane, wwhen utilized as a basis of Satis Home in Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. December 1689: King James II spent his last nighttime when king at Abdication Home in a High Street, today the Lloyds TSB bank. 11 June 1667: Dutch Raid on the Medway. In the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch under de Ruijter broke through the chain at Upnor and sailed to Rochester Bridge capturing and firing a English fleet. Samuel Pepys, who was responsible at a Navy Board, describes a survive successful invasion of British soil within his diaries. Trophies from either a raid come in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 1687: Construction of the Guildhall, the ceiling existence from Sir Cloudesley Shovell. 1765: HMS Victory was launched in neighboring Chatham. It became flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Trafalgar.

Demographics
Rochester is a share of the Medway Towns.