An exciting day today, because I’m going on a work day out to the Historic Dockyard Chatham. I’ve never been before and you all know I love boats, so this is a great work day for me!
As expected it takes me an hour to drive out of London but once I hit the M25 its smooth sailing all the way to Chatham.
The first thing I notice is that the place is immense! Even now that it is no longer a working military dockyard, the trust itself takes up a huge footprint, and the surrounding areas which historically would have also been part of the dockyard have now be redeveloped into an industrial and commercial estate.
My first surprise of the day is that I see a lot of film trailers and signs. It turns out that Call the Midwife (long running BBC TV Show and a guilty pleasure of mine) films here regularly, and they are filming today. If my colleagues aren’t careful they’ll lose me to the film set, surely no one would notice an extra conservator supervising. I’ve got professional Bridgerton expertise I’ll have you know!
I meet up with my colleagues and we are greeted by Paul, a lovely man and friend who used to work with us. It’s brilliant to see him doing so well in his new role. We are given some background on the history of the trust and how it functions to this day. Like most historic sites that are run as trusts and have no financial support from the government, they rely on grant money, ticket sales and corporate events to fund the continued care of the buildings and collections.
I love the diversity and ingenuity of these sites, to stay relevant and be a part of the community. They rent out work spaces in the historic buildings, they have multiple museum galleries and ships for visitors to explore. They host private and corporate events, feature filming, specialty tours and I’m sure loads more that I don’t even realise. They have over 40 listed buildings within their site which must be a mammoth undertaking to care for.
We are given a tour of the Commissioners House which is about to be restored back to its Georgian origin. It’s got the most amazing panel painting mounted in the ceiling which is thought to have originally come off of a ship that was being dismantled.
The aim of this project is to re service the building and re implement some Georgian historical features that have been lost over the years. Obviously the best part of the tour was being shown the secret passageways and underground cellars built from ships timbers dating back to the 1600’s
After some lunch we had the afternoon to free flow around the site. I particularly loved The Big Store, a covered slipways which now houses all the boats and vehicles in the museum collection. I can’t say I was a fan of the mannequins though, stuff of nightmares! We then visited the commissioners garden and the rope factory.
It’s an amazing feeling to wander round a site and buildings that look virtually unchanged from how they would have been in the 1960’s/70’s . It’s like falling back in time and discovering an alternate universe.
Finally before we left we visited the temporary and permanent museum galleries and I was blown away by all the model ships. The scale of them was once gain so much larger than I would have expected and the details so exact. I was reminded that in the days before computer generated plans and software the only way to scale and create an accurate plan for a ship would have been to build a hyper realistic model. Gosh, the talent that these fabricators had was unbelievable.
I am exhausted and happy and my brain is full of new learnings. What a fabulous day. I’d say we only really scratched the surface of what was here to explore, I didn’t even tour any of the boats, or the SUBMARINE!
I will definitely need to come back. If you are looking for a great day out with entertainment for all ages you should definitely add the Historic Dockyards Chatham to your list!
A huge thanks to Paul and the entire team at the Historic Dockyards Chatham for your hospitality and time.
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