REVIT Heritage Report.pdf

Torfaen County Borough Council
REVIT: A Review of the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Assets on Brownfield Sites
Dry Docks are still partly used for storage and maintenance and the display
of boats; and
• Officers Terrace and South Stables: these have been restored and
converted to residential accommodation.
• The adjacent site of the Chatham Historic Dockyard is Chatham Maritime,
a former Royal Naval Base situated on the elbow of the bend in the River
Medway marking the transition from the main river to its estuary. The site
has been developed as a residential, higher education and commercial
quarter and was, from 1986-1996, designated an Enterprise Zone.
• Significant investment over the last ten years has enabled the creation of a
new, high quality environment with the former Pembroke Barracks
buildings now occupied by the University of Greenwich. This now has a
student population of 6,000 from Kent University and 850 new houses on
St Mary’s Island.
• Chatham Port, which includes three historic buildings and the North Mast
Pond, continues its well-established operation as a port handling timber
and paper-related products and offering ship-repairing facilities into the
foreseeable future. There are also proposals to extend this existing
industrial operation.
Tourism
4.3.10 Further historic sites around the Chatham Historic Dockyard area enable the
tourist attraction to be extended into the surrounding area. These include
Brompton, Fort Amherst and the Lines, which have a series of defensive
ditches and ramparts dating from 1756. The defences around Fort Amherst
provide an open field which has remained in use as sports grounds and public
parks, and forms an important green space and buffer between Gillingham and
the rest of the Medway Towns.
4.3.11 A further initiative in Medway has involved encouraging tourism by promoting
the historic dockyard as part of a cross-border Maritime Heritage Trail in
partnership with the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France. Similar crossborder
trails and links can be an effective way of widening the tourist base and
making existing budgets go further.
4.3.12 Chatham has literary connections with Charles Dickens who lived and wrote
several of his famous novels nearby. An annual summer and winter Dickens
Festival attract thousands of visitors to the Docks.
4.3.13 In addition, since the historic dockyard is adjacent to the River Medway, it has
obvious potential for a range of tourism and leisure uses based on the
possibility of improving public access to the river. A number of historic ships,
for instance the paddle steamer the Waverley, currently make regular
excursions from a number of sites around the coast of Britain and are usually
fully subscribed; in the east of England these include the sites of Margate and
Dover. Events which have proved tourist attractions, from other historic
harbours/docks, include promoting day and weekend cruises on historic ships;
this is currently being investigated by Nantes.
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