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Photo: Loco Steve from Bromley , UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Upnor Castle is an Elizabethan artillery fort located on the west bank of the River Medway in Kent. It is in the village of Upnor, opposite and a short distance downriver from the Chatham Dockyard, at one time a key naval facility. The fort was intended to protect both the dockyard and ships of the Royal Navy anchored in the Medway. It was constructed between 1559 and 1567 on the orders of Elizabeth I, during a period of tension with Spain and other European powers. The castle consists of a two-storeyed main building protected by a curtain wall and towers, with a triangular gun platform projecting into the river. It was garrisoned by about 80 men with a peak armament of around 20 cannon of various calibres.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Local history museum in a building dating from 1687.
The first bridge over the Medway to Strood was built by the Romans in 43AD. The present bridge was built in 1914, with a 1970 extension, and is worth walking across to see the views of the castle. Unusually the bridge is maintained by a charity, the Rochester Bridge Trust using investments from medieval times. There is a small chapel built into the bridge (open a few days per year) which continues a tradition started in 1393.
The second-oldest cathedral foundation in England, after Canterbury.
Eastgate House was built in late 16th century. The garden has a Swiss chalet where Dickens used to write, moved here in the 1960s. Eastgate House appears in Dicken's books as the Nun's House in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Westgate in Pickwick Papers. The house was built in the 1590s for the Mayor of Rochester.
Recognised as one of the best-preserved and finest examples of Norman architecture in England, the great keep towering over the River Medway, square, massive and one of the tallest in the country, measures high, square and has walls thick in places.
House and formal garden, dating from 1454. The house in still occupied and so is only open occasionally, usually Thursday and Friday in summer. Dickens used this as the basis for Satis House in Great Expectations.