RIVER MEDWAY

The Medway is a tributary of the River Thames. The Medway Towns - Rochester, Gillingham and Chatham - have made the Medway famous, but this is also one of the longest rivers in South East England.

The Medway, with its sheltered harbour so close to both the open sea and to London, has been a strategic naval port for centuries. As a result of Chatham Docks, the area is one of the most industrial in Kent, with shipbuilding and repair. In contrast, the headwaters are an area of forest and sparse population.

Despite its importance as a harbour, this is no mighty river like the Thames into whose estuary the Medway flows. The deep, meandering estuary section is actually rather short, leading from the coast only as far as the chalk hills of the North Downs. So how did such a river gets its wide open mouth that could provide such an important harbour and yet change so quickly inland?

To answer this we have to go back tens of millions of years to when the land of Kent was part of a huge dome of rocks. Rivers like the Medway flowed north down the flanks of the dome, gradually stripping away the surface rocks of the dome and revealing the landscape that we see today. This was the time when the Medway, flowing directly northward, was able to use its short sharp course and rapidly flowing waters to cut a gap through the chalk that now makes the North Downs.

Fast forward in time next to the Ice Age, just a few hundred thousand years ago. With a third of the world's land locked under ice, the level of water in the oceans was at an all time low and the coast of Britain was many miles farther out than it is today. The Medway was never engulfed by ice, but kept on flowing to this low sea, extending its valley across what was once the coastal shelf to the new sea. And so it cut a deep channel miles out from the present shore.

Then, just over 10,000 years ago, when the Ice Age was over, the sea levels rose and water flooded back to its former level, flooding the lower part of the Medway and creating the deep sheltered harbour that was to be used for many centuries, starting with the establishment of a fort by the Romans and the founding of Rochester (chester means fort).

The deep, steep-sided valley of the lower Medway has been a barrier to transport along the North Kent shore. Today both the M2 and the M20 leap across the valley using giant bridges that give motorists spectacular views of the valley.

The upper Medway is so different from the lower river. The Medway actually rises to the west of its estuary, on the high Weald of Kent just beyond Tonbridge and Royal Tunbridge Wells. This latter town has natural springs whose waters eventually find their way to the Medway estuary.

The river begins by flowing from west to east, following a band of soft rock in central Kent. Then, just east of Tonbridge, the river makes a dramatic turn to the north and cuts first through a sandstone ridge and then crosses a band of soft clay before cutting through the chalk to join with the lower valley.

In its upper course the river has been greedy, capturing the headwaters of many of its neighbours and so reinforcing its own flow. The headwaters of both the Stour and the Darent have both been "beheaded" by this process called "river capture" .

Places of the Medway

Chatham is about 10 kilometres (6 miles) from the estuary. Its most famous landmark is the Royal Naval Dockyard, founded by Queen Elizabeth I. It has built over 300 warships, including such famous vessels as Horatio Nelson's Victory. There is a war memorial, and extensive defensive banks and ditches known as The Lines were actually built to defend the shipyard from attack from the land, not the sea.

Rochester was a walled Roman-British town (known first as Durobrivae in Roman times, then Hroffeceaster in Saxon times). It lies on the Roman road from the east Kent ports to London. Rochester Cathedral is one of the earliest in England, founded by Saint Augustine in 604.