We have a very leisurely start today as we didn’t want to get to Rochester too early, so about 10:00 we set off. Unfortunately there are a lot of roadworks in Rochester so we missed the car park we had planed to go in, but we found one just by the station and near to Visitor Information so in the end it was a good location. We walked through visitor information, thinking that they would have some information either about the Hop trail, or the town but to be honest they may as well close it down because they didn’t have much info and the woman who worked there probably knew less than I did, so we set off with the walk that I had found! First stop was Eastgate House, this is a 16th and 17th century town house, once the family home of Sir Peter Buck, a senior officer at the Royal Tudor Dockyard. In 1791 James Reed and his wife lived in the house and changed it to a Girls boarding school, which it remained for almost 100 years. In the 1870s Samuel Shaw, a coal merchant brought the house and it once again became a private house. It featured in the Charles Dickens novel ‘The Pickwick Papers’ and later in ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’. It was briefly a hostel for young men, but, In 1903 Rochester City Council opened it as a museum, it was during this period that the grounds were developed and the Dickens Chalet, which once stood in his former home in Kent was relocated to the gardens, it was never really explained why they did this but they did! In 2012 £1.28 million was awarded from the Lottery council and restoration work began, this created the house / museum as it looks today with the majority of the walls and rooms displayed as they were in the late 16th century. From here we started the walk along high street before turning up to visit Restoration House. This was originally two medieval buildings built in 1454 and 1502, with a space between them, they were joined in 1640 by inserting a third building between the two. It was called Restoration House after the visit of King Charles II on the eve of his restoration. The first owner of the completed house was Henry Clerke in 1670 when he refaced the entrance facade, the Great Staircase. The house had a relatively peaceful existence until 1986 when it was purchased by Rod Hull – he of Rod and Emu fame, to save it from being turned into a car park. He paid £270,000 and spent a further £500,000 restoring it, it was taken by the Receiver in 1994 to cover an unpaid tax bill! In the last 10 years, the current owners, referred to as Johnathan and Richard although no more information on them was provided, have uncovered a number of the original features and paintwork. Interestingly Johnathan seems to have made one of the rooms on the first floor his bedroom, which basically means that he has put a bed in the middle of a large room with very little else in the way of facilities, although who knows what is behind some of the doors! After we finished walking round we continued the walk through a park which is called The Vines and was once the vineyard of the monks of St Andrew’s Priory, this led to Middle Canon Row, which is a terrace built in 1723 for the lesser clergy of Rochester Cathedral. Described by Dickens as ‘a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements’ not so today I would suggest if they are still complete houses they are rather nice! By this time it was about 12:30 so we decided to stop at the pub for some lunch, we sat outside with lovely views of the castle and the cathedral but unfortunately the sun went in and it got quite chilly so we moved inside. After lunch we continued the walk, at the Cathedral, it is rather spectacular with what looks like a lovely organ and some rather nice stain glass windows. From here we walked to the Castle which was built by The Bishop of Rochester Gunfulf in the 1080s and was one of the earliest such buildings in England. In 1127 Henry I entrusted it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who began to build the great keep which is the tallest such building to survive in Europe. The castle endured three sieges, including an assault by King John in 1215 which destroyed one corner of the keep. It became redundant as a royal stronghold. This damage had a lasting impact, the royal hall and chambers were never rebuilt and the castle went into a long period of decline. From the 15th century the Bailey was let to tenants and by the second half of the 16th century the castle was entirely redundant, Elizabeth I licences the removal of stone from the curtain wall to build a new fort at Upnor. The castle played no part in the Civil War, however, a violent fire took place in the keep before 1660 which reduced the building to ruin. It is now in the care of the English Heritage which does at least mean that it has been ‘made safe’ and you are able to walk up the stair case although there are not any floors that you can walk across, you can even walk around the battlements at the top of the castle which provides fantastic views over the River Medway. Once we finished in the castle we walked down to the Esplanade then back up the high street past the Guildhall and a massive clock that juts out from the wall of the Old Corn Exchange and finally we returned to where we started at Visitor information so we headed back to the car to come back home after a couple of great days away!
