The Rest Is History - 600. CHATHAM HIGH STREET

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Why is Chatham High-street both futuristic and riddled with the past? Why was it a magnet for historical figures such as King John, Charles II, Nelson and Charles Dickens, and the location for some of the most totemic moments in British history? Is it really a melting pot of every epoch - from the Roman invasion of Britain, to the Napoleonic Wars, and to the Second World War - and therefore the most historically significant high-street in the world?  ______ Try Adobe Express for free now at https://www.adobe.com/uk/express/spotlight/designwithexpress?sdid=HM85WZZV&mv=display&mv2=ctv or by searching in the app store. Learn more at https://uber.com/onourway ______ The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producers: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Video Producers: Harry Swan + Jack Meek + Charlie Rodwell Social Producer: Harry Balden Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to the rest is history.com and join the club. That is the rest is history.com. This episode is presented by Adobe Express, the quick and easy create-anything app. What does that mean? Well, say you need to make a presentation or a video or a social media post or a flyer to some, certainly to me, that sounds intimidating. But Tom, with Adobe Express's intuitive features like templates, generative AI and real-time collaboration,

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from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event Conditions supply visit your local Volvo retailer or go to Explore Volvo So Tom, we have some incredibly exciting news for our listeners in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, don't we? We absolutely do, Dominic, because we are going to be in Belfast, in Dublin and in Cork next year in April.

And we will be talking about the tragic story of Titanic. We will be on stage in Belfast at the Waterfront Hall on Friday, 17th of April. We'll be in Dublin at the Convention Centre on Saturday the 18th of April and in Cork at the Opera House on Monday the 20th of April. Tickets will go on sale at the Restis History.com exclusively for members of the Restis History Club from next Monday the 22nd of September 2025 at 9 a.m. So join the Rest is History Club at the Restis History.com. now if you want to snap your tickets up early. And tickets will then be available to purchase for everyone else at therestishistory.com from next Thursday.

That's the 25th of September 2025 at 9am. So for your chance to see us on stage live in Belfast, Dublin or Cork, simply head to therestishistory.com to get your tickets. Rochester and Chatham are two distinct places, but contiguous, except the interval of a very small marsh or vacancy between Rochester and Chatham. There is little remarkable in Rochester, except the ruins of a very old castle and an ancient, but not extraordinary cathedral, but the river, and its appendices are the most consistent. considerable of the kind in the world. This being the chief arsenal of the Royal Navy of Great Britain. The buildings here are indeed like the ships themselves,

surprisingly large, and in their several kinds they're beautiful. The warehouses, or rather streets are warehouses and storehouses for laying up the naval treasure are the largest in dimension and the most in number that are anywhere to be seen in the world. the rope walk for making cables and the forges for anchors and other iron work bear up a portion to the rest as also the wet dock for keeping masts and yards are the greatest size where they lie sunk in the water to preserve them the boat yard the anchor yard all like the hole monstrously great and extensive they're not easily described so that tom was Daniel Defoe, who was a Londoner in the first volume of his tour through the whole island of Great Britain, published in 1724. It was a massive success, with the exception of

Robinson Crusoe. It was by far his best-selling book, but never before has it been read out on the top of Rochester Castle on a grey and slightly dreary day in howling wind to an audience of bored-looking camera people. So very exciting scenes. Yeah, because this is the long-awaited episode on Chatham High Street, but not just Chatham High Street, intra-chatam, which is the stretch

that leads us on to Rochester High Street, and we are on the 100-foot summit of the keep of Rochester Castle. So Daniel Defoe, just for people who don't know, Defoe was, he wasn't just Britain's first novelist. He was Britain's, one of Britain's greatest journalists, wasn't he? And he did this tour of the whole island of Great Britain, and he published it just a couple of decades after the Act of Union had created a United Kingdom out of England and Scotland. So this is a moment in British history like no other.

It's a point in which Britain is poised on the brink of absolutely enormous political, economic, diplomatic change. Absolutely. And Defoe essentially loved change. He loved the idea of progress. progress, very whiggish, isn't it? And although DeFoe ended up working essentially as a kind of spy for a Tory government, I think in his instincts, he was all about the wigs. So as a young man, he had fought for the Duke of Monmouth against his uncle, the Catholic King James II, and Monmouth's rebellion had gone disastrously badly. But DeFoe had managed to avoid being hanged, which is good news for fans of Robertson-Cruzzo

and 18th century travelogues around Britain. He'd loved the glorious revolution when James II got kicked out and replaced by the Protestant William and Mary and he'd been a big enthusiast for the acts of union between England and Scotland and had actively worked to promote them actually. And as you can probably tell from that accent,

which is exactly how he spoke, his origins were in trade. He's a mercantile man, isn't he? So he'd worked as a wine merchant. So that perhaps explains one, that's one reason why he's so keen on the Royal Navy, the idea of commerce, of Britannia ruling the waves, and of course he loves a naval dockyard. He absolutely does. And just to say as well, that, you know, he had sailed the seeds.

He'd been a wine merchant. Dominant, you love a Portuguese wine depot in the 18th century, don't you? And Defoe was kind of always hanging out there. And so it's not surprising, really, that when he comes to Rochester, which he describes as having a castle and cathedral. He looks as it as being rather boring and old. And Chatham, which is where the royal dockyards are, he is all over that. He thinks it's incredible.

He thinks it's absolutely wonderful. And I think that that's why that passage describing Rochester and Chatham is absolutely brilliant for pinpointing this idea of Britain as being on the kind of cusp of incredible change. Yeah. So there's a world of kind of warehouses and dockyards and battleships. global trade and free trade and all that kind of stuff and this is the sort of this is the central access this is the hub of that of that world isn't it rochester and chatham these kind of twin towns across the medway so tom give us a little bit of a tour d'orison so the reason that

we're here is obviously because i've bullied you into doing it you've put up a heroic three year rearguard action but at last we're here in rochester in chatton you know what ladies and gentlemen when I look at Tom's notes and now that I'm here on site I could not be more excited I'm absolutely gog with excitement because there are so many delights to come in this episode

there's Dickens, there's naval stuff there might be a mentioner for a show Nelson there's people wrestling on the floor of a chapel or something it is probably the most exciting the most action-packed the most blood-soaked and in many ways the most moving episode

that we've ever done on the rest is history the reason that I wanted to do it is that I've been walking the Saxon Shore way, which is a kind of national route that follows the coastline of Kent, which for those people not familiar with the geography of England is the bit in the southeast that sticks out into the sea. And I realized coming here that Rochester High Street becomes Chatham High Street. And I felt that the way in which you go from kind of, well, we've got an Iron Age hill fort, we've got a Roman bridge, we've got an Anglo-Saxon Cathedral, we've got a Norman castle,

and yet you end up with Chatham Docks, this kind of great nerve centre of British imperial expansion. I am making the pitch that this is the most historic street in England. Surely the world, Tom. No? Well, I think in Britain you can make a case for the Royal Marley in Edinburgh, which has Rhearood and Edinburgh Castle and the grave of Adam Smith and all kinds of things like that. But this work, if you want a sense of the sweep and sweep,

ban and process of change that manifests itself through English history, Rochester High Street, Chatham High Street, if you think of it as a single road, I mean, is absolutely fantastic. And you, as Defoe says, Rochester is all about the kind of traditional England of tourist brochures. Yeah. Chatham is about energy and industry and transformation. And you could say, I think, that in the 18th and 19th centuries, it's a kind of cross between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley.

And Chatham right now, I mean, it's retained that reputation, hasn't it, Tom, as a glittering cosmopolitan on the front line of technological and social change, no? I fear not. So the Chatham dockyards shut in 1984. And I think it would be fair to say that if you're an enthusiast for vape shops or possibly to two parlors, Chatham High Street now is very much the place to go. I actually love both of those things. So it's great. it's probably not at the cutting edge of naval technology now in the way that it used to be. So I think it's fair to say that Chatham has seen happier days. And in that again, of course, it's an exemplar of British history because obviously Britain is not the great power that it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. And so if Chatham exemplifies the rise to global greatness of Britain, there's also a sense in which its current state tells you about Britain's relative decline. But before we do some history, why don't we have a little excursion into geography?

We don't do enough geography on the rest of history. And Theo in particular is a passionate aficionado of geography. So Tom, talk to Theo and indeed the listeners about geography. Yeah, well, geography, of course, so important to the study of history because so often geography is historical destiny. And that is definitely the case with Rochester and Chatham. So just to set the geographical scene for people. who may not be O'Fay with North Kent.

So we are just south of the Thames Estuary, the stretch of water that extends from London outwards into the North Sea. So we've got Essex to the north, and we in Kent on the south coast of the Thames Estuary. And we are standing beside the Medway, which is a river that rises in Kent and flows northwards out into the Thames Estuary. And Rochester and Chatham both stand on the Medway and would not have come into existence without the Medway. So to talk about Rochester first, why is Rochester where it is?

Basically, because it is the lowest bridging point on the river Medway. So essentially, if you want to get across the Medway, Rochester is the place to come. And in that, its relationship to the Medway is equivalent to London's relationship to the Thames. And as with London, it's the Romans who build London Bridge. So here it's the Romans who build the first bridge over the Medway. But even before the Romans come, there is a trackway here that leads from Dover, the southeastern tip of Kent, up towards the River Thames. And this is the fording point.

So kind of very much kind of Iron Age highway. And this is the highway that in due course will come to be called Watling Street, one of the great roads of England. And so where is that, Tom? Is that right here? Yeah. So that bridge that you can see there, if you're watching this on YouTube, and essentially Chatham High Street, Rochester High Street,

that's all part of Watling Street. So essentially, when the Romans under Julius Caesar land here in 55 and then 54 BC, in 54 BC Caesar advances towards the Thames, he would almost certainly have come this way. And again, we can be pretty confident that in AD 43, when Claudius sends three legions here under Alis Plautius, again, they would have come here. And in fact, we know that there is a great two-day battle on the Medway,

perhaps here more likely a little bit further south. And Vespasian, who will go on to become the emperor, he crosses the river with his Batavian cavalry, who have this extraordinary ability to swim in full armour. So very exciting scenes. It's unbelievably exciting. And I cannot describe it. It's such a shame that the listeners,

and even the people watching on YouTube, can't actually be here because the air is electric with excitement, isn't it? To be here in this spot where it actually happened. Unbelievable history. Well, can I just crank up the excitement by revealing the name that the Romans give to the town that they built here? It's Durobrivi, which means almost certainly stronghold by the bridge. I mean, couldn't be more exciting.

And both Watling Street and this bridge built by the Romans survive the Roman occupation, don't they? basically because they're just so well located. So if you're going to Dover, if you are coming from Dover, if you're going to London, you're going to go this way. Yes. So it's absolutely the kind of, it's essentially, it's the great road that links London and everything that lies beyond London to Dover and therefore to the continent. But enough of Rochester.

There's been a lot of Rochester so far. Where's Chatham? Talk to me about Chatham. Well, the view of Chatham is on the other side of the keep where we're standing now. I'm looking at it now. It's gorgeous. It's absolutely stunning. I think Dominic, we should get Harry to move the cameras and go over on the other side of the keep.

Two. So as you can see if you are watching on Spotify or on YouTube, we have now moved to the other side of the castle. And the sense of drama, tension and jeopardy is becoming more acute with every moment for two reasons. Number one, the wind has now reached gale force levels. And secondly, the staff of the castle are having to fight. off a huge throng downstairs. Two different groups. One, a group of Restis History

club members who've just signed up at the Restis History.com. And I've heard that Tom Holland is here. They're very excited. And the other, a group of school children whom Tom has forbidden from coming to the top of the castle, ruining their outing their day

and quite possibly their love of history forever. But Tom, tell us, tell everybody watching on Spotify and YouTube why you have barred these children from coming to the top of the castle so that you can talk about Chatham. Well, I'll try to do it over the sound of the sobbing of distraught 12-year-old history fans. But it's important for us to be on the summit of this 100-foot Norman keep

because we've come to the other side and now you can see the sweep of the medway. And we talked about how the medway is key to Rochester. It's also the key to Chatham. So Chatham is closer to the sea than Rochester, which means that. that it is much more convenient should you be sailing an enormous Tudor ship, which is what starts to happen in the 16th century, because England is expanding its global interests, trade, piracy, ultimately conquest. And the Elizabethan court starts to realize that it's ideally situated between London

and the kind of the shipping lanes that lead to the... world. So in 1568, Elizabeth I first formally institutes Chatham as a royal dockyard. And from that point on, it plays a fundamental role in the growth of the Royal Navy and the emergence of first English and then British engagement with the broader world, which of course ultimately will result in the establishment of the British Empire. And obviously, that is a process that takes centuries. and the emergence of Chatham as what it becomes in the 18th and into the 19th century to the most futuristic place on the face of the planet is a huge, huge, long-term government-sponsored plan

of the kind perhaps you might say that the British state has slightly forgotten how to engage in. But born as much of failure as success, right? Because where we are now, the Medway, is the location for one of the most disgraceful, perfidious, ultimately insignificant moments in world history, isn't it? Which is the Dutch raid on the Medway. They're bad people and they really let themselves down. So that's in June 1667 and it's part of a series of wars that England and the Dutch Republic are waging against each other.

This is the second bout of war under the reign of Charles II who's just come back after his exile in the Netherlands and we'll be hearing more about that in due course. And the Dutch and Charles II aren't getting on well at all in the 1660. And as we say, in 1667, the Dutch sail up the medway and they find that the defences in place to protect the dockyards and all the ships that are at anchor there just aren't up to scratch. And they burn or capture 13 English ships and Dominic in a shocking display of thieving. They haul away HMS Royal Charles, which is the flagship of the English Navy. and disgracefully, it's still on display

in the Rikes Museum to this day. Do you want to know what Daniel Defoe? Yeah. Tell me what he said. I know you like a bit, Daniel DeFoe. He had pungent views about this. He said, This alarm gave England such a sense of the consequence

of the River Madway and of all the docks and yards of Chathamick. This alarm, he changed the voice because he toured the country. Yeah, it picked up. It picked up different accents. He said, this alarm, guy of England, such a sense of the consequence of the River Medway, and of all the docks and yards at Chatham, and of the danger of the Royal Navy I exposed to there,

that all these doors which are open then are locked up and sufficiently barred since that time, and tis not now in the power of any nation under heaven, a nation, I don't know what happened there, though they should be masters at sea, unless they were masters at land too at the same time to give us such another affront. I don't actually know what that last bit means

because I was just so distracted by the accent. What does he mean? What he means is that the raid on the Medway was such a shock to the British state that absolutely impregnable defences were put in place all the way along the line of the redway up to Chatham and particularly at the mouth of the estuary going into the medway and essentially he's saying that even if naval supremacy

were to pass from Britain, people still wouldn't be able to force their way in and the only conceivable way in which Chatham could be destroyed would be if there was a land invasion. And Defoe is right because Chatham stands impregnable throughout the Seven Years' War, throughout the Napoleonic Wars, and we talked in our episodes on Nelson about how Napoleon's plan for England, if he only get his troops across, was to march straight on Chatham and destroy it. I mean, it would be the equivalent of knocking out, I don't know,

a kind of nuclear defence system or something like that today. And it survives the First World War, it survives the Second World War. And throughout those conflicts and also throughout the long decades of peace in the 19th century, Chatham, I guess, is both the symbol and the fulcrum of Britain's role as a great global power. So before that, Tom, just quickly, because the school children are fighting their way up the stairs. Britain was, of course, herself part of a great empire, and it was a kind of node in the imperial network of the Roman Empire. And actually, we've been looking down at Watling Street and the Great Bridge, haven't we? Just say a little bit more about that bridge, because you love that bridge.

Yeah, so, as you've said, the first bridge over the Medway, probably upon mountain bridge and then the Romans develop it with great stone piers and kind of wooden planks across it. And that bridge endures well after the collapse of Roman power. And it's there probably up until 8th or 9th centuries when it gets rebuilt again. And the reason that's so important, as we said, it's the quickest way to get from Dover, which is the shortest crossing point from the continent, up to London. And so it's not surprising that in the wake of the Roman withdrawal. Rome makes contact again with what's become Anglo-Saxon England, not with military means, but with spiritual means when at the end of the sixth century, St. Augustine arrives

with a band of monks to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons. And his original plan is to get to London and establish an archbishopric there, but they don't because London is kind of hostile territory. So famously, they stop in Canterbury, and that's why the head of the Church of England is in Canterbury to this day. And that is where the first cathedral in Anglo-Saxon England is built. But the second Anglo-Saxon cathedral, which is founded in 604, is down there from where we are standing. And it's founded in Rochester by a guy called Justice, who, like Augustine, is from Rome. And it's incredibly old. I mean, Defoe says it's. It's. It says it's not very interesting, but it's, I mean, it is interesting in the sense that, you know,

this takes us right the way back to the earliest days of the Roman church in England, back to the age of Gregory the Great. And I, you know, I find it very moving. It's kind of a sense of a living link. Yeah, you love that, don't you? I do. It was given to Odo, a buyer, by William the Conqueror, no? Yeah, so Anglo-Saxon England comes to an end with the Norman conquest, and in our episode on that. We talked about how William from Hastings goes to Dover and captures it and then goes to London. And he comes via Rochester. So he sees that it's an absolutely kind of crucial place to seize. And so his half-brother, Odo, who is a bishop, but very fond of fighting. So famously, you know, as a bishop, you're not allowed to shed blood. So he kills people with a club or a

mace. And William gives Rochester as a bishopric to Odo. But Odo is. He's a very bad man. He is very treacherous. And he gets chucked out. And so William gives it to this remarkable man who is called, it's not Gandalf, it's Gundalf, but quite similar. And he has a slightly, you know, it's Gandalfesque role in William's career.

Because he's a man who achieves extraordinary things. He's very, very smart, very proficient at creating things. So he's a great architecture. architect. He's a great engineer. And it's Gundulf who builds the white tower in London, which becomes the kind of the basis for the Tower of London. And in 1083, he starts work here in Rochester on renewing the Anglo-Saxon cathedral that had basically kind of fallen to pieces. It was very decrepit. Not much of what he actually built survives, except for a place called Gundolf's Tower, which annoyingly we can't actually see from here. Anyway, I mean, people are interested in

Goldelf, you can still see his tower. So, this is great podcasting. It really is. And it gets remodeled throughout the middle ages. It has a particularly bad time in the 13th century when King John, England's worst king, lutes it. And then

Simon DeMontford, the self-style father of the English parliament, he lutes it as well. And I think there's always a sense that it's a little bit shabby. That's how Peep's described it in the 16th century. We heard DeFoe, saying it was ancient but not extraordinary.

And again, I mean, I think that's kind of fair. But pick out some highlights. So there's a nice crypt. There's a crypt. So that was built by Gundolf. So Gandalf fans can see that as well as his tower. You're excited about the Great Westall, aren't you? Very excited.

It's got Christ and it's got justice and someone else. King Ethelbert, who welcomed Augustine and his missionaries to Ken. And there's another lovely ceiling with some green men. You love a green man. But most of all, the thing you were telling me, which I found actually quite moving, You said one of the most, something that had brought you closer to the dimension of the supernatural than ever before was you went in 2019, you played mini golf in the center of the cathedral. In 2019, following in the footsteps of St. Justice and Bishop Gundolf, the cathedral authority set up a mini golf course in the nave of the cathedral. Can I tell people what you, so Tom texted me after he played golf in the cathedral.

and he said, Dominic, while playing adventure golf, I really felt that I, I reflected on the bridges that need to be built in our own lives and in the world today. And Dominic, you know what's amazing about that reflection that I had? Yeah. Is it a few days later, the diocese of Rochester put out a message saying that we hope that while playing adventure golf, visitors will reflect on the bridges that need to be built in their own lives and in our world today. So it's incredible.

Yet again, the Diocese of Rochester has been hacking our texts. Unbelievable. So on that bombshell, Tom, let's just move on very quickly to talk about Rochester Castle before we descend and allow the school children up here. Tell me about the history of Rochester Castle. So this is what, Norman originally? Yeah, so Defoe in that bit you read, I mean, he's very rude about the cathedral, perhaps not unfairly, but he said that the castle was just a ruin, which, I mean, we're standing

up here, and you can see it's clearly not a ruin. we've got a sign there saying it's unsafe for humans a hundred foot drop beneath generally this i mean this is very very impressive structure um and it's not surprising because where you have um a very important river crossing you want to have a very strong defensive system so that you can keep control of it and so it's not surprising that as you say yes it is william who builds the first castle here because that's what the normans are doing um and again he gives that you know he's given the cathedral to Odo, he also tells Odo to build a castle, which Odo does. It's made of wood. But when Odo gets chucked out for behaving badly and treacherously towards his half-brother,

he hands the responsibility for the castle over to Bishop Gundulf. And we've said how Gundulf is a tremendous architect, a tremendous engineer. He gets to work building a castle out of stone masonry, probably one of the first stone castles to be built by the Normans after the conquest. And it's because of that, I was just reading up in the Bodleon before we came up here, that Gundulf apparently is recognised by the core of Royal Engineering as the man who established them. So they kind of trace a line of continuity all the way back to through the Middle Ages, back to Gundalph. And that I guess in part is due to the reputation of the Tower of London, but also due to this, because although the keep where we're standing,

now was built in the 12th century. The walls are Gandalf's. And this keep is, I mean, is amazing. When you come into Rochester on the train, you can see it kind of looming up. I think it's the tallest keep in England, one of the tallest keeps in the whole of Europe. And again, it was built by not just a bishop, but by an archbishop. So Rochester got given to the Archbishop Rick of Canterbury in the 12th century. We've had it in the show before. It's been in the rest of history. It has. So it featured in our episode on the Peasants Revolt, misnamed, but this great rebellion of people in Essex, but also in Kent. And when the rebels want to march on London, they have to seize the castle first because it's the great key to the road that leads to London. And they manage to storm the castle and they capture the Castellan, the guy in charge of it. And they take him hostage. And when they get to London and they want to negotiate, with Richard II and his government, the Castellan of Rochester Cathedral is the guy that they use

to communicate between the rebels and the royal authorities. And basically, through Rochester Castle's history, loads of big names have been here, haven't they? So King John of France, when he was captured by the Black Prince, he was brought through Rochester, made a donation to the cathedral. Yes. That's nice. Henry V, after returning in triumph from Agincourt, you know, he has to get to Calais, crosses to Calais rides the great road up to London and passes through Rochester. And he is not the last king to make a memorable procession through Rochester because there is another one who has left a real mark on the city. We can't see that mark that he left from up here.

So I think we should wind our way down the stairs past the sobbing schoolchildren and allow them to come up here to the top and we will go down and go to this site, which commemorates the arrival in Rochester in 1660 of Charles II. Tom, Restoration House, Rochester. That's where we are right now. An absolutely gorgeous example of 17th century architecture. We've just been shown around by the owner, Jonathan Wilmot, amazing artworks, furniture and whatnot that you can see if you're watching on Spotify or on YouTube. But why are we here? Well, as you say, an amazing 17th century house. Origins going back to late 15th century, 16th century, all kind of patched together. So Pevesner rather rudely

described it as being all highly peculiar and undisciplined. But I think it's unbelievably atmospheric, very different vibe to being on top of a Norman castle. But we are here because the most famous person who stayed here was Charles II, who had been in exile throughout the restoration. Cromwell dies. People don't know what to do, so they say, well, let's try and bring Charles II back. So he lands in Dover. He's been staying in the Dutch Republic. Now he's back in English soil, and he's processing towards London, and he spends the night of 28th of May, 1660 here. And the next morning he gets up, it's his birthday, and he goes off into London. And so hence the name, Restoration House.

But there's a brilliant literary connection, isn't there? And a connection with one of Rochester's, one of this area's favourite sons. Because am I not right in saying that Charles Dickens used this house where we're sitting right now as the inspiration for Satis House, which is, of course, Miss Havisham's house in his novel Great Expectations? I think for the purposes of this podcast, we can say 100%. This was the inspiration. It has said that. No, no. Dickens was seen leaning on a kind of, looking in at it while writing great expectations. I think we can say 100%. And it actually, for those who are looking on YouTube or Spotify, if you imagine this setting covered in cobwebs and a mouldering wedding cake in the background, I think you can absolutely imagine Ms. Havisham jilted at the altar and had a cade wedding dress kind of gliding around like a ghoul, poor Pip, you know, the little blacksmith's boy, feeling. very coarse and sorry for himself.

Well, Great Expectations are very close to my heart, Tom, because I want the school public speaking and reading competition four years in a row with the opening of Great Expectations. Four years in a row? Four years in a row with the same reading. God. Joyless. Are you allowed to do that? Not really.

It was considered against the spirit, but not the letter of the law. I really does seem like cheating. By about the third or fourth time, the head of English said, you're really ruining this for everybody else with this reading that is a lot. unbeatable because it's such a brilliant reading. But you must be excited, though, to be here. Oh, yeah. I mean, but you know, you come home.

That's the way I roll, Tom. That's the way I operate. If I can win and suck all the pleasure out of it for other people, so much the better. Let's talk about Dickens. The reason that he's kind of hanging out here gazing at the windows is because he actually had a house just outside, Rochester, the other side of the Medway, which was called Gads Hill Place. Yeah.

And he lived there for the last 14 years of his life. And he absolutely loved Rochester. Basically, everywhere you go in Rochester, you see Dickens illusions. So restaurants, cafes, whatever. We'd just been to the cafe, Jaggers. Yeah, and there are kind of a little sign saying Dickens, you know, this house was where so-and-so lived or whatever. And Gads Hill, the house outside Rochester where he lived, he got given a Swiss chalet by one of his friends. And it kind of arrived like an IKEA pack in various boxes.

and Dickens wanted to assemble it at a viewpoint where he could look out at the sea. So the bottom of his garden, there was quite a busy road. So he dug a tunnel under the road and then he assembled the Swiss chalet on the far side of the road. So that in the second floor where he had his study, he could look out at the sea and be inspired by it. And that chalet, apparently, is still, you can still see it just off Rochester High Street. So if you like Dickens, I mean, there's no end of Dickensian. facts here. And the other famous thing associated with Dickens here is that it's the setting for his last novel, which he never completed the mystery of Edwin Drood, and the opium

addict and cathedral organist, John Jasper, who almost certainly is the murderer of Edwin Drood, or is Edwin Drew dead, who knows. He lived on one of the gates that's just below the castle where we've been. And the Rochester in Edwin Drood is called Cloisterham. And the, you Dickens' description of it is very similarly to foe. So he says a city of another and a bygone time is close to him. All things in it are of the past. So there's that

sense of Rochester as a place where you know, the history of England is invested. The layers of history. But as Dickens also knew, the same cannot be said of Chatham. And he knew Chatham very well because he had spent the formative years of his childhood there. And that's because

his father, John Dickens, had worked as a clerk there, hadn't he, the naval payoff? And so Dickens lived there from what, the age of five to the age of 11? Yes. And thought it was wonderful. Yeah. Had beautiful kind of incredible childhood memories of it, thought it was amazing. And then years later, in 1860, when he was 48, he came back.

And, you know, it was his first visit to Chatham since he'd been a boy. And he wrote up about it expressing essentially his disappointment that it wasn't quite as amazing as he remembered it. And he was so disappointed. And listeners to this podcast will be thrilled to know this, that he called Chatham Dullesborough. So maybe we could use that as the title for this episode. But then after a day touring, Chatham, aka Dalsborough, he left in a slightly more benignant mood. So he wrote, when I went alone to the railway to catch my train, I was in a more charitable mood with Dahlbara than I had been all day. And yet in my heart, I had loved it all day too. Who was I that I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me? When I myself had come back, so changed to it. All my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and garrulous belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much

the wiser, and so much the worse. Oh, Tom, that's lovely. That's a lovely reading, and actually that inspires me to go to Chatham. So I think we should head off from Restoration House. I have to say, what an amazing house this is and how royally we've been looked after. I actually, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say, I don't think I've ever been to a location with the rest of history that I have enjoyed more and that will live in my memory for longer than Restoration House. Well, do you know, I'm sat here looking at you. You're in a magnificent period armchair behind you as a ticking grandfather clock. I kind of think you should have this vibe for every recording of the rest of's history. I think I do already, no? I don't think you do quite.

Oh, disappointing. But anyway, talking of positive vibes, let's off head off to Chatham High Street. This episode is brought to you by Uber. Now, do you know that feeling when someone shows up for you when you need it most? We all need that sometimes, and Uber knows it. Uber isn't just a ride or a meal delivered, it's showing up no matter what. Like for your long-distance friends, bringing soup when they're sick, sending flowers when they're down. When it really matters, whatever it is, you.

show up. Where there's a will, we're on our way. Uber, on our way. Download the app today. This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society. Now, Thomas, you know, in the Middle Ages, it could take you years if you're a monk to create a manuscript. You'd have to copy it out, word by word, and then after all that, the margins would be ready, and you'd put all kind of decorative elements and all kinds of gills and stuff in the margins. And then, it would look fantastic. So it might take often years to finish, but the finished product would then last for centuries. And that is pretty much what the Folio Society does today, only, of course, with slightly less parchment and fewer quills. Yes, the Folio Society takes some of the greatest

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Welcome back to the rest is history. And very excitingly, we have now moved from Rochester to Chatham. Tom, let's walk up this lovely little slope here and discuss why you brought us here. Well, Dominic, if you look here, it reads, Gundolph Road. So we are on Gundolf Road. Gundulf, very much friend of the show, the founder of the Royal Engineers, William I first's go-to bishop, the guy who designed Rochester Cathedral and the castle. And he got his hands on Chatham as well, because although Chatham is very much a kind of 18th century, 19th century place, that's its heyday, there was a village here in the Middle Ages and Gundal founded a hospital for the poor and lepros,

and they would be brought along the river, which is just down there, and then there would be kind of special passageways that would thread up from the river to bring them to the hospital because nobody wanted to come in touch with the leper, and only the lepros were allowed to go up these. The hospital is long gone, but there is one remainder of it, and it is this chapel that we're looking at here. So the front of the chapel, clearly very Victorian.

This is by Sir Gilbert Scott, who designed the Albert Memorial and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and these kind of great monuments of Neo-Gothic Victoriana. But if we go round the back, we will find a bit of the original 12th century chapel. And I like to think that even though we are here in the heart of Chatham, the swirl of 21st century Britain, maybe inside this chapel, there is a little haven, a little

reminder of the age of faith. And we will see what we find inside. You can see this entrance. The eastern section, there are still bits of the original 12th century chapel. So if we go in through here, we can see, you know, because I imagine that there'll be a kind of a mood of cloistered peace, maybe amid the hurly-burly of Chatham, a reminder of the spirituality of the Middle Ages. And I think it'll be very moving for people. So let's go and see what's going on. So this is maybe not quite what I was expecting. So we should maybe describe for people.

we're seeing. This, to me, very much speaks of medieval spirituality. There are about four people writhing and grappling on the ground. So if you're not watching on Spotify or YouTube, that's what I'm looking at. Basically, somebody's thighs and they're wrapped around another person's neck. And behind them are two signs reading Granite Gym. And this ancient sanctuary, this repository of medieval spirituality, seems to have become a gym. So I like to think that this probably isn't what Bishop Gundolf wanted, but whatever. Yeah. It's progress.

I'm sure he did a bit of wrestling with Christ here. But Dominic, just to say that is the, so Harry, behind you, that is what remains of the 12th century chapel. So basically, for those people not watching, Tom is pointing at a bit of wall, the lovely, lovely window. I don't know what else to say, really, Tom. Do you want to describe it to this? Well, what I will say is that there aren't people kind of wrestling. underneath the under that so maybe showing a bit of respect there is a

sofa isn't that broken till so that's good there is so anyway that's progress so we have crossed the street and we've come a little bit further forward in time so we're now standing for those people who are not watching on YouTube or Spotify we are standing

in front of some lovely little brick arms houses and Tom these were built in 1592 and they're associated with a very famous name in kind of Tudor seafaring history. Yes, so this is the hospital of Sir John Hawkins in Chatham. It is the single oldest Royal Navy charity, the oldest Royal Navy Hospital. And it was founded by Sir John Hawkins, who was a cousin of Sir Francis Drake.

He was first the treasurer of Elizabeth's Navy, then its controller. He played a key role in establishing. not just Chatham, but at the English Navy as a force to be reckoned with. And in his will, he set aside some property to endow a hospital, which makes him sound one of history's good guys. But there is a slight complication which is hinted at on the website for the Hospital of Sir John Hawkins, where it confesses that a lot of the money that Sir John Hawkins made, which enabled him to fund this hospital

was made in the slave trade and so this disavowal is made although not out of step with the societal norms of his time the governors fully acknowledge the abhorrent and brutal nature of this vile activity and regret Sir John's involvement profoundly and then there's a kind of big

however he was an outstanding seaman navigator, naval administrator and benefactor of naval veterans and both of those things are clearly true and so this is absolutely the kind of place that focuses some of the ambivalences and complexities of Britain's...

Everybody loves focusing on ambivalence on. And he's a great Spanish Armada man, isn't he? All of that. I mean, he's roughs, roughs, beards, you know, playing bowls, all of that. Yes, I mean, he's, you know, he is one of the great kind of,

the Victorians loved him. They loved the kind of idea that the sea dogs of, under Elizabeth I first, had been the prototype for Britain's Navy. And this place had a, tremendous history of sea doggery or sea dogging, didn't it? Because there's a lot of sea dogging going on here.

They had two veterans at the Battle of Copenhagen who were here. And a veteran of Trafalgar lived here, right? Yes. A guy called Henry Dawkins was here. Now, you said that this was built in the Tudor period. These are not Tudor building. So actually, it got rebuilt in 1789. Right.

And then it got refurbished again in the 1980s. when it got opened by the Queen Mother. Oh, I love it. So you've got John Hawkins, you've got redevelopment in the period of the French Revolution, and you've got the Queen Mother. And I think that, Dominant, you'd agree, that this is one of the many jewels of Chatham High Street.

That's the rich tapestry of British history, right? But the exciting news is, there are more jewels. And I think we should go and look. So let's go. That was so weak. So a really weak clap there from The to start this new segment. Now, Tom, one of the things

that we associate with Dockland areas, of course, is pubs. And we are looking at two splendid historic pubs. So one of them is the North Forland. And I just want to give people an impression of their forensic research that you've brought to this episode.

Yeah. So your notes say, Nelson reputedly drank here. So that's great. So that definitely happened. So I read that it was rebuilt in 1912 and shut in 2012. So an amazing...

So I bet you're glad you've seen that now. Imagine if you'd been stuck in the Cotswolds all this time and you've never got to see that. A really amazing history. There's more, isn't that? Yeah, there's more. You have not yet drunk your fill of the cup of historical delights that Chatham High Street has to offer. So do you want to continue or are you laughing too much? No, I'm laughing too much, but I will continue.

So opposite us is something called the Ship Inn. And I read in Tom's notes, Tom's written the words, the words, one of the words. the oldest gay pubs in the country. I think that's definitely true. But then his citation comes from Kenton. I'm laughing so much I can't speak. Kent Online is a very reputable source.

Very scholarly, peer-reviewed. So do you want to read that what it says? Kent Online. Apparently. I feel like the word apparently is doing a lot of lifting there. It gets better, doesn't it? apparently the bartender's mate recently compiled a history of Rochester High Street

and proudly informed me this is the writer from Kent Online that the pub is more than 500 years old and Medway's oldest gay bar well that's definitely true not only this but he confidently declared that the purple dance bar on the left complete with its brick look wallpaper was the site of the first arrested conviction for buggery way back in the days of Henry the 8th. So apparently, that from... According to the Barman's mate.

The Barman's mates. But actually, there's some serious history behind us, much as I'm laughing about your ludicrous research, there's some serious history behind us that I'm hoping you've put an equal amount of effort into. Well, actually, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to read from the foundation stone on this building. Which reads, this foundation stone was laid by Simon Magnus for a memorial synagogue in affectionate remembrance of his much lamented and only son Lazarus Simon Magnus Esquire.

So a synagogue on Chatham High Street is a reminder of the fact that, as well as pubs, what you expect to find in, you know, Docklands and Dockyards and all that kind of thing, is lots of people from overseas. And when the Jews were allowed back into England in the mid-17th century, by Oliver Cromwell. My friend of the show, Oliver Cromwell. Although not officially, but effectively. One of the earliest communities outside London where Jews settled was in Chatham, because of course it was growing. It was provided links to all the other Jewish communities on the continent. And the first synagogue on this site was built in 1750,

and the people who were able to fund it could do it because they were helping people in the Royal Navy who had captured prizes to then kind of sell them, to get to convert it into money. they would take a cut, and that cut then enabled them to fund the first synagogue. But this particular synagogue opened in 1869, and it was, as the foundation said, it was built by the father of this guy, Simon Magnus, who had been a captain in the fourth Kent Artillery Volunteers, and he'd also been a business partner of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great engineer. So, you know, Gundulf, Brunel, all the great engineers are featuring in this story.

and we mentioned earlier about the leper hospital and about how there are these paths that go from the river up to where the hospital was and there was one of them that went along the west side of the synagogue so it was a kind of freehold of a strip of ground which remains kind of you know they couldn't buy it and they have to this day they have to pay a rent to use it of 5p per annum so again a kind of fascinating link taking us back to the medieval origins yet more of the extraordinarily rich and vibrant history of this part of the world yes absolutely and and this synagogue is still going strong and during both the wars particularly in the second world war it provided a home for jewish servicemen who passed through chatham and were working here so we've talked about nelson we've talked about um the second world war and the obvious place in chatham and

Chatham, where Nelson and the Second World War could join is the naval dockyards, the Royal Dockyards, the reason that all these incredible treasures, Dominic, are lining Chatham High Street. So I think that we should go there now. Let's do that. Right. Now, if you're watching this, you can see that we've moved location to somewhere very, very spectacular indeed. So, Tom, we have moved to Chatham's Royal Dockyard. and we're in the bowels of the dockyard and a place we will reveal in a second. So the dockyard is built in

first opens in 1567 and last for what? 414 years. Wow. Okay. Yeah, it closes in 1984. So you love this place. Now, the irony is that when we first did the rest of history,

you hated the Royal Navy, you hated dockyards. I hated rope. And above all, you hated rope. So it's fitting that to apologize and to abase yourself, you have come to the ropery of the Royal Dock I'll just talk to me about the raw dot com before we get on to the ropery.

I do love the dockyard here in Chatham. And the reason for that, it's a phrase that NAM Roger, the great historian of the Royal Navy, expressed, that the dockyards, Portsmouth, Chatham, places like that are 19th century islands in an 18th century sea. And you actually did, you did a TV show here on HG Wells. And I guess you came here because that sense of, it has a science fiction quality. It's this idea of technology being ahead of the historical context, because these are amazing places. These are where the most lethal killing machines on the face of the planet are developed, namely the ships of the Royal Navy, of which over the course of the 414 years, over 500 ships are built here, including the most famous of all HMS victory.

Yeah, so Tom, our old friend Daniel Defoe had strong views about this place, didn't he? So I know you love a Daniel Defoe reading because you admire his accent so much. He said, the building yards, the docks, timber yard, the deal yard, the mast yard, the gunyard, the rope walks, and all the other yards and places set apart for the works belonging to the Navy, like a well-ordered city. And though you see the whole place as it were in the utmost hurry, yet you see no confusion. Every man knows his own business. Yeah. Now, the thing is, he was talking about the rope walks, and we are actually in the ropery, which, I mean, you talked about NAM, Roger, this idea of this being the 19th century, in the 18th century, at its peak, this place,

the ropery, was probably the most futuristic, the most technologically industrially advanced place on the planet. Now, the sublime irony of this is that when we started the podcast, you said there was nothing you hated more than naval rope. And yet you have chosen this place to do this, you know, basically this entire episode, in fact, probably the whole of the podcast has been building to this moment. Yeah. So what is it about?

Tell me about the ropery. I think it's one of the most amazing historic structures in Britain. It's a great monument to the age of Nelson, to the rise of the Royal Navy, to global supremacy. And as you say, it is a glimpse of the future built in the 1780s, 1790s. It is 1,140 feet long. When it's built, it was the longest brick building in. Britain. It is absolutely stupefying. And some of the machinery here, where they still make rope to this day, you can buy it around the corner. It dates back to 1806. So if you want a flavor

of what it was that powered Chatham, powered this stretch of the Medway, powered the Royal Navy, this is the place to come. So in a way, Tom, this is where the Napoleonic Wars, were won. This is where the Pax Britannica of the 19th century was established. This is what's powering all that, the great dynamo, the ropery,

Chatham Dockyard, the Royal Navy, the infrastructure, the sinews of Britain's greatness. And of course, that continues all the way through to the middle of the 20th century. I think we should fast forward to the Second World War. And we should go out of here, and we should go to an equally exciting

historical site, which is a splendid ship. Let's do that. And we will be ending this podcast by treading the metal boards of a British battleship. So Tom, we've been on an epic journey, haven't we, through Rochester and Chatterman. Now we've reached an earth-shattering conclusion because we have come deep. into the dockyard here at Chatham and we are on a Second World War battleship. So tell me a little about this ship and why you've chosen this and tell me a little bit about a story. Okay.

Well, you know that I love a Second World War battleship. Yeah. And to be more precise, I love a C-class destroyer, which is what this ship, HMS Cavalier, a name that I like to think Charles II would very much be approved of. Yeah, Prince Rupert, Charles I'd all love that. They would all have loved it. That's what this is. A C-class destroyer. What's your favorite kind of destroyer?

What class do you? Probably B. But a C-class is quite good. I like all destroyers, but I probably rank top three, C, B, probably A, in that order. And also, I think also very nice is the colour. So for those you can't see it, it's a kind of lovely turquoise. And it blends in with the turquoise of the River Medway, which is behind us. Gosh, that's well.

So, anyway, so. That's a painterly eye. It absolutely is. So this ship is, it was launched in the Second World War. It fought in Norway. It joined a convoy, going to the Soviet Union and back. You say it, surely. She.

And then she sailed out to join in the final stages of the War in the Pacific. So absolutely a reminder of Chatham's role in the Second World War. But I think that this ship is also a memorial to the decline of Chatham because this ship got decommissioned in the 1970s and Chatham gets decommissioned in 1984 and really with the closing of the docks so much that had made Chatham Chatham for 400 odd years ends.

So in a sense where we are now is a reminder both of Britain's glory days in the Second World War but also of the geopolitical and economic decline that followed and in that sense I think this is a perfect place to conclude the journey the odyssey

that you were talking about so we've gone from Arnage Hillfort Roman Bridge and now we are in the 1980s In a very real sense Tom we've covered all English history the story of

I'm about say one town but really two towns Rochester and Chatham yeah but joined by a single high street joined by a single high street and let's not end on a downbeat note no because I feel what we've gained from this is a sense of the extraordinarily

rich history of Chatham, but also I've learned. What have you learned, Dominic? I've learned that Chatham is not just a town, Tom. It's a community, and I think that's lovely. What about you? Yeah, I can't argue with that. We've been welcomed with such hospitality,

aren't we on the streets? I think we've learned a lot of streets of Chatham. Probably more than the people listen to this podcast have learned from us. I hope that they've learned something, which is go to Rochester High Street, walk down it, Get to Chatham High Street, then come to the docks, and you couldn't be happier. All of English history is there.

On that shocking bombshell, we should probably say goodbye to Chatham, goodbye to Rochester, and goodbye to the listeners. Goodbye. Goodbye.