River Medway - History

History

Much of the information in this paragraph is taken from Frank Jessup's book

Ancient sites abound throughout the length of the River Medway. The area around Aylesford is a particularly important Stone Age site: the Medway megaliths are a group of Neolithic chamber tombs including the Coldrum Stones and Kit's Coty House. Bronze Age ornaments and beakers have been found all along the river; and burial sites and other finds come from the pre-Roman Iron Age. The Romans have left evidence of many villas in the lower Medway Valley; and burial sites of the Jutes have also been found.

The Domesday Book records many manors in the Medway valley. Castles became a feature of the landscape: Rochester, Allington, Leeds, and West Malling being some of them.

Two military actions are named after the river: the Battle of the Medway (43 CE, during the Roman invasion of Britain; the other, the Raid on the Medway, took place in 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

In the eighteenth century Samuel Ireland published an illustrated book about a journey up the River Medway, although he travels no further than the River Bewl at Bayham Abbey. The book contains a map, which shows some of the tributaries (unnamed). The illustrations of the river include the castles at Queenborough, Upnor, Leybourne, Tonbridge and Hever; Penshurst Place; and the bridges at Teston, Maidstone, Aylesford, East Farleigh, Barming, Branbridges and Tonbridge. The hop fields in the vicinity of the latter are also described; and the course of the River Len, which then supplied Maidstone with its water supply. The book states that Within about two miles of Tunbridge the Medway branches out into several small streams, five of which unite at the town”)” ... having each its stone bridge. (the river is of course flowing in the opposite direction).

The Thames and Medway Canal, linking the Medway at Strood to Gravesend was completed in 1824, but it was a not commercial success: by 1849 the South Eastern Railway had taken over the tunnel. the western part of the canal remained in use until 1934.

In 1942 the world's first test of a submarine oil pipeline was conducted on a pipeline laid across the Medway in Operation Pluto.