Lost Gillingham

The town of Gillingham in Kent grew up around the Royal Navy’s Chatham Dockyard. By the River Medway, this had been an important maritime area for centuries but it was only in the 19th century that the small settlement grew into a town. A large proportion of the town’s workforce and businesses depending on the dockyard so its closure in the 1980s meant that the town had to rebuild its focus. It is now the largest and busiest town in the Medway Region but much has changed over the years, annual military and naval displays that are now just a memory, houses occupied by artisans and labourers demolished, shops and chapels removed due to extensive road projects, cinemas and theatres redeveloped, as well as barracks, defence works and the Victorian naval dockyard that have had to find a new life. Lost Gillingham presents a portrait of this corner of Kent over the last century to recent decades that has radically changed or disappeared today, showing not only industries and buildings that have gone but also people and street scenes, many popular places of entertainment and much more. This fascinating photographic history of lost Kent will appeal to all those who live in the area or know it well, as well as those who remember it from previous decades.