A dockyard is not a place where you expect to find a garden
that spans three centuries of horticultural history. But slip through the side
entrance behind the Resident Commissioner’s House in Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent,
and that’s exactly what you’ll find. Originally created for the private
enjoyment of Peter Pett, one of Britain’s leading shipwrights and Chatham’s
second Resident Commissioner in 1698, it initially took the form of a romantic
Italian-style garden with three terraces cut into the hillside, with the lower
one featuring a water garden and banqueting house. The diarist John Evelyn
described it as ‘resembling some fine villa about Rome’. But fashions changed,
and the old house was demolished and rebuilt in a grander style. The lower terrace
lost its fountains and canals, the middle terrace became a parterre, and the
upper one an orchard.
In Victorian times, the garden was a family one, with a
lawn and fountain in the centre. (A facing brick wall without any windows, above,
provided privacy from clerks working in the neighbouring Navy Pay Office, among
them the father of author Charles Dickens.) The 20th c, with two World
Wars, brought a period of decline. When the Naval Dockyard closed in 1984 the
garden passed into the care of the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Kent
Gardens Trust, who have been restoring original features.
The orchard has been
replanted with 18th c species and a formal garden commemorating the
1989 bombing of the Royal Marines School of Music at Deal, which killed 11
musicians, has been extended.
Note: The area is expecting a major influx of
visitors in 2017 for events marking the 350th anniversary of
the Battle of the Medway (below), when much of the British Navy was destroyed by a
daring Dutch naval raid. There will be re-enactments, sporting events and a spectacular finale on the water, Medway in Flames, from June 8 - 17, while the Dockyard is staging a special exhibition with a range of
artefacts on loan from national and international institutions (June 8 –
September 3).
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| Battle of the Medway 1667. Credit: Kevin Clarkson |
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