Local history

Whatever your interests in the local history of the area, there is a wealth of resources available to you in Medway, including museums, historic buildings and collections from which to explore Medway’s fascinating past. These include:

• A Medway Timeline - an introductory history of Medway from pre-history to the present day, including references to further information.
• Museums - the Guildhall Museum, Brook Pumping Station, Royal Engineers Museum and Museum of the Royal Dockyard.
• Historic places to visit - including Rochester Cathedral, The Historic Dockyard at Chatham, Restoration House, Gad’s Hill Place, Temple Manor and Fort Amherst.
• Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre - Medway’s historic archives, modern records and the main local studies reference collection for the area are housed here. The Centre welcomes researchers, students, family historians and business users.
• CityArk (cityark.medway.gov.uk) - online archives service incorporating a searchable database to the archives collections, an imagebase of digitised records and photographs and a document gallery containing graphical reproductions of some notable documents from the collections.
• MILN: Medway Index to Local Newspapers www.medway.gov.uk/MILN.
• Medway Libraries - a major reference and lending collection of local studies material is available at Gillingham library and there are smaller collections at other branches.
• Online Catalogue (libcat.medway.gov.uk) - Medway Libraries online catalogue includes holdings of local studies material in the collections of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, Gillingham library and other branch libraries.

The photograph above was taken in 1963 and appears with the kind permission of the KM Group. Copies can be ordered from its Central Information Unit. Please phone 01622 794604 quoting reference PD 502353.

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