Medway
- This article is about Medway in England. For others, see Medway (disambiguation)
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Medway sometimes known as the Medway Towns, is an area of urban sprawl and environmentally significant wetlands, formed by the fusion of Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester historically in Kent, England, either side of the River Medway estuary, where it joins the Thames.
The area is currently part of the administrative county of Medway which was formed from the Kent districts of Gillingham and Rochester by the Kent (Borough of Gillingham and City of Rochester upon Medway) (Structural Change) Order 1996, which took effect on April 1, 1998.
The county has a population of 240,228 (1991), and is administared as a unitary authority. It has an area of 20,504 hectares giving a population density of 12.5. It is thus larger than all but 8 of the 33 London boroughs.
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History
Medway has a long and varied history dominated originally by the City of Rochester and later by the military establishments principally in Chatham. Rochester was established by the Romans on an Iron Age site to control the point where Watling Street crossed the River Medway. The first cathedral was buillt in the earlier 600s.
The Royal Navy opened a dockyard in the 1500s and it was finally closed in 1984. It was protected by a series of forts including the Great Lines, Fort Amherst, Fort Pitt, Fort Borstal. Though Tudor in Origin, the majority buildings in the Historic Dockyard are Georgian. It was here that Britain's most famous wooden warship HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson's flagship, was built.
In Medway there are 82 scheduled ancient monuments, 831.5 listed buildings and 22 conservation areas.
Medway applied for city status for the competitions in 2000 and 2002, but lost. Rochester-upon-Medway itself had been a city, but had lost this status due to an oversight.
Demographics
Following the Closure of HM Dockyard Chatham great attention was paid to the unemployment figures, by 1997 it stood at 5.5%, below the UK average. 50% of the working population works outside the district- which principally means London.