Chattenden
| Chattenden | |
 Looking over Rough Shaw towards Chattenden |
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  Chattenden |
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| OS grid reference | TQ758722 |
|---|---|
| Civil parish | Hoo |
| Unitary authority | Medway |
| Ceremonial county | Kent |
| Region | South East |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | ROCHESTER |
| Postcode district | ME3 |
| Dialling code | 01634 |
| Police | Kent |
| Fire | Kent |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | Medway to be replaced 2007 by Rochester and Strood |
Coordinates: 51°25′23″N 0°30′58″E / 51.423°N 0.516°E
Chattenden is a small village in Hoo Parish, in the unitary authority of Medway in South East England. It was, until 1998,[1] part of Kent and is still ceremonially associated via the Lieutenancies Act.[2] It lies to the north of the A228 and the village of Wainscott, at the top of Four Elms Hill.
Origins
Chattenden means 'Forest Settlement' from the elements ceto and ham dun. It is recorded in 1100 as Chetindunam, and Chatindone in 1281.[3]
Geography and ecology
Turning left on the A228 on the brow of Four Elms Hill, leads onto Kitchener Road, that eventually leads itself to the Great Chattenden Woods, designated as an SSSI, due to the diversity of insects, birds, plants and trees found there. To the south of Chattenden is Towerhill Wood, also known as Coxham Wood, with has Public Footpaths that lead into Lower Upnor, where the Arethusa Venture Centre and the Medway Yacht Club (MYC) are located. Along the A228, (which becomes the Ratcliffe Highway in Chattenden), was once a pub known as 'The Old George'.
Military history
After 1667 gunpowder began to be stored in Upnor Castle on the north/west bank of the River Medway. During the Napoleonic Wars a gunpowder magazine was built alongside the castle designed to store a further 10,000 barrels of gunpowder, followed in the 1850s by another series of buildings along the riverside designed for filling and storing explosive shells - all for use in Her Majesty's Ships and in the extensive fortifications surrounding Chatham and Sheerness Naval Dockyards.
When it was realised that there was no room for further expansion of the storage facilities at Upnor, a nearby site inland at Chattenden was purchased, and in 1875 five magazines were built on a hillside (the contours of which helped provide a natural traverse for security and protection). Between them, the magazines were designed to hold 40,000 barrels of gunpowder (with space for more in times of war). A barracks was also built, a little to the south, to accommodate the eight officers and 120 men detailed to guard the site. The magazine compound and barracks were linked to Upnor by a narrow-gauge railway.[4]
From 1899 the storage facility was expanded with the development of the adjacent Lodge Hill site, which provided space for a further dozen small magazines for storing cordite, dry guncotton and other highly-explosive materials. Each magazine was surrounded by an earth mound (traverse) and all the individual buildings were linked by a tramway connected to the railway line. For safety the structures were set apart from one another, and the intervening space was planted with dense woodland.
As early as 1912 it was realised that the Lodge Hill and Chattenden Magazines were vulnerable to air attack. A surviving First World War anti-aircraft emplacement on Chatterden Ridge is of historic importance: it may have been the first anti-aircraft emplacement in the world, and was almost certainly the first in Britain.[5] Nevertheless, Chattenden and Lodge Hill continued to be used for ammunition storage through both World Wars, until 1961. Thereafter, the site was used as extensive barracks and training facilities for the Royal School of Military Engineering.
The 1872 Barracks quadrangle, with its central clock tower, was vacated in the 1980s and demolished.[6] The 1870s magazines at Chattenden remain in situ (though vulnerable to subsidence - a problem first identified soon after their completion) together with a pair of contemporary terraces which once housed the on-site police force. Several structures also survive at Lodge Hill, which continued to be used as a training ground for the Joint Services Bomb Disposal School in the 21st century, preparing personnel for active service in Iraq and Afghanistan.[4]
In 2007 the MoD Military Land was designated in 2007 as a brownfield area for redevelopment for residential and light industrial use. A plan had been worked up for 5000 houses in a ₤1bn scheme. The Lodge Hill camp however is home to 85 singing male nightingales, which is over 1% of the entire UK population which stands at 6000. Natural England have declared this a SSSI.[lower-alpha 1] Nightingales do a several thousand mile migration to West Africa and then return to the same tree making biodiversity offsetting[lower-alpha 2] inappropriate for the species.[7]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Owen Sweeney of the Medway Countryside Forum said "... the blackthorn and bramble scrub, as well as the coppiced ancient woodland, was a wonderful habitat for the extremely shy bird, which spends 12 weeks or so on the 815-acre site before wintering in west Africa. "These are the remaining green lungs amid the sprawling development around: Medway is full,..."
- ↑ A scheme where sensitive land is developed in exchange for the provision of similar piece of habitat in the region
References
- ↑ "Medway Council – Local history: Medway in the 20th century 1901 – 2000". web.archive.org. 2009. Archived from the original on March 9, 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
- ↑ "Lieutenancies Act 1997". legislation.gov.uk. 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
- ↑ The Place Names Of Kent, Judith Glover, 1976, Batsford. ISBN 0-905270-61-4
- 1 2 "Built Heritage Baseline Assessment: Lodge Hill" (PDF). www.medway.gov.uk. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
- ↑ Local authority site survey
- ↑ Brian Matthews, The History Of Strood Rural District, 1971, Strood Rural District Council
- ↑ Carrington, Damian (29 March 2013). "Row over £1bn development plan on nightingale habitat site in Kent". The Guardian (Manchester: Guardian).
External links
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