Maidstone & Medway Towns

A few minutes out of the town centre of Maidstone is Cobtree, where you will find the Museum of Kent Life. The museum details rural Kent life in days gone by and is one of the few surviving paces where hops are grown, picked and dried in the traditional manner.

Queen Elizabeth I put Chatham on the map when she founded the first royal dockyard here. It was here that many of the boats that defeated the Spanish Armada were produced and HMS Victory, probably the most famous British ship ever, was launched from Chatham’s slipways in 1765. Charles Dickens spent much of his childhood in Chatham. The dockyards are mentioned in the Pickwick Papers and are described as a dirty, stinking place, littered with drunks.

Rochester has been an important settlement for thousands of years because of its important strategic position, overlooking a crossing in the Medway. The first cathedral was founded here by Saxon King Ethelbert, though the one that stands today dates from Norman times, making Rochester the second oldest diocese in the country.