Talk:Chatham, Kent/Archive 1

extent of town
From the article:

"As always, it would be nice to include geographical and demographic data to match entries on US towns, assuming anyone can find it...."

is Luton, Walderslade, Lordswoods, etc not part of Chatham? (as ME5, not just ME4)

is Wayfield not part of Chatham either (again ME5) --C18 16:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * the mere fact that today the post office sees fit to lump together places under postcodes does not necessarily qualify for inclusion in an article purporting to be about a specific place. With the build-up of the conurbation many places which were never within Chatham as an entity get "Chatham" as part of their postal address. For that reason I have stated that Brompton is not "part of Chatham" as was originally stated: indeed New Brompton was the name given to Gillingham railway station when it was first opened in 1858 as a small country station! I guess that part of the article "Chatham today" which I have not completed might well include those facts, but with caution, since they may not all have been within the original boundary of Chatham itself.


 * Wayfield, Luton, Walderslade and Lordswood are all areas within chatham. Though I believe they use to be small villages, prior to developments in the 20th century. Jatos 09:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes they are (well IMHO especailly Luton) in these secne which of the 3 (or 5) main towns/city of Medway they are in. Pickle 12:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Jonathon R Thompson
I have omitted the third of the "famous people" - Jonathon R Thompson - since I cannot find him in Google and there is no article about him. Of course Percy Whitlock doesn't have one either, but I have said that he was a composer ... Peter Shearan 07:09, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Removed from article
From 1832 to 1918 Chatham was represented by a Member of Parliament; after the latter date the constituency was subsumed into one, for the Medway Towns. ***NEEDS CHECKING****

In 1999 *needs checking* Chatham, along with the other Medway Towns, broke away from the control of Kent County Council and is now run by Medway Council. Gary Kirk

I removed this as unverified facts do not belong in any article MRSC 15:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Fort Borstal has not been demolished. It is, however, being converted into a home --Cunningham 15:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Dickens World?
Mention? Link? 85.227.226.168 08:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Last I heard it had failed to open yet again. Has that yet changed?ClemRutter 08:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The Catti In Britain
Yes, the Catti, sometimes also historically known as the Chatti or Khatti, were Aryans who established colonies in Chatham as well as Chattenden in the Medway, North Kent. The book entitled "The Phoenician Origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons by Lawrence A. Waddell, mentions the Catti in Britain. My grandfather was an avid historian, and would tell the family in detail all about British place names and tribal groups. ✅

Grossly excessive white space
I've been playing around with this article in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the grossly excessive amount of white space caused by the positioning of the images. Nothing seems to work, and I suspect the infobox and its images may be the cause. Can someone do something about this? Emeraude (talk) 10:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Apparently not.Emeraude (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The solution is to improve the article. If the lead section were a three paragraph summary of the content, the white space would disappear. Before this can be done, additional material needs to be there that can be summarised! The WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements lists sections that have not been covered. I am too close to the issues to add much more. Even so, a quick glance at Gravesend, Kent, which User:Peter Shearan has recently improved still suffers from the whitespace problem. Looking further, on German Wikipedia, at, for instance, de:Dresden and the problem has shifted.
 * ClemRutter (talk) 22:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You may be right that a longer intro would help to solve this. However, it should not be necessary for every article to have a minimum length of intro for white space to diasppear! In most other articles that have a white space problem, it is usually possible toresolve the issue simply by repositioning images, for example, by placing them all at the top of the article or immediately following an infobox. The result is that images appear down the right margin and white space disappears. In this particular case, that has absolutely no effect and I can only conclude that the infobox (or more likely, the inclusion of an image within it) is what causes the problem. Emeraude (talk) 10:26, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * might it not be the excessive caption lengths of images? A Geography section referring to each of those which illustrate the landform in the area, would be better Peter Shearan (talk) 06:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

This article
I see my name is mentioned by Clem Ritter above! I had not before now been looking at this article, having been Wiki-busy elsewhere, but now that I have, and as I see it, its main fault is its overwhelming desire to put the now-defunct dockyard as its most important part, when there is a perfectly good and detailed article on that establishment. I remember taking a year group of school children there a generation ago, and thinking, even then, that what we were looking at was all in the past: unkempt buildings and huge areas of open space. Now it has all been Disneyfied, as so often happens with heritage sites, but even so the sheer activity which took place when it was a going concern cannot be replicated. Merely repeating what is in the Dockyard article (but with far less detail) is not telling readers about Chatham as it is.

What I am saying is that we should be looking at this place - as with every other - as it is today; of course there should be some reference to its past, but not to this extent. A glance at the Gillingham, Kent article, which after all had twice as much of the Dockyard as did Chatham, will show what I mean. Using the Wiki preferred headings for this article will open it up much more for entries about the place in 2008. And a further question - isn't Brompton today (not in ecclesiastical terms) part of what was the Borough of Gillingham? That puts the RE barracks ouside Chatham.

As to the history paragraph:
 * Chatham was on the old Roman road, and archaeology says that some remains can be found here
 * it did have a medieval past (see British History Online) when the manor of Chatham was passed on by William I
 * This article says that the place was a dock before QEII got there; and it wasn't built as it is now until 1662.
 * the same article gives a great deal of information about the area, particularly useful for a Geography section

One day I might have a go at it, if no-one else does in the meantime! Peter Shearan (talk) 09:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * PS I have attempted a more comprehensive intro: see how that looks. Peter Shearan (talk) 09:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * PPS I have also revised the roads section. There is little point in having all those media references: they are fairly predictable ("Disgusted Motorist of Chatham" et al) and are now well past their sell-by date. The one I have included does make some points as to what is going to be done, and the date is today! Peter Shearan (talk) 13:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The day came and I have had a go at it!! It is laid out as per Wiki geography settlements: I am quite happy to explain why some of the things written before have been left out, but mostly it was (as with Chatham Dockyard and railway station for example) because the original article on both those contained the infrmation and there didn't seem any reason to repeat it. Peter Shearan (talk) 15:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Mistake in History?
The article says "After the Norman invasion the manor of Chatham, originally Saxon, was given by William the Conqueror to Earl Godwin." Earl Godwin was the Earl of Wessex, the father of King Harold Godwinson who William killed when invading England, and dead before the Norman Conquest even happened. QiZhe (talk) 04:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

St John's church
What is this bit saying? "Abolished"? As far as I am aware the church is still there; it ceased use in 2001 according to http://www.chathamvines.com/home.html.

"St John's was built in 1821, but remodelled in 1869, and abolished in 1964."MarkyMarkD (talk) 19:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Etymology
I have edited the etymology. Of the three suggested etymologies, only the first is supported by the standard modern authorities (one of which I've added to the refs).

The reasons to delete the other two are: --Pfold (talk) 10:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Waddell's work is crackpot (and racist) stuff - as the title surely indicates: THE PHOENICIAN Origin of Britons Scots & Anglo-Saxons DISCOVERED BY PHOENICIAN & SUMERIAN INSCRIPTIONS IN BRITAIN, BY PRE-ROMAN BRITON COINS & A MASS OF NEW HISTORY
 * 2) The source on British History Online is from Samuel Lewis's A Topographical Dictionary of England of 1848, before the serious study of Anglo-Saxon place names had started, and so carries no weight in face of unanimous agreement among modern experts.

Photo 3
This paragraph discribing the Luton Village with reference to the photo 3 does not in fact show Luton Village at all nor victorian terraced houses. This photo does show the Daisy and Coney Banks the Wayfield and Downsview Areas the golf driving range and the bottom of Hopewell Drive Fort Luton is in the area top right. This this area was built in the 20th century beyond the original Luton Village. These houses do not follow the contour lines either many of the roads are hilly. The former Village of Luton with its distinct victorian terrraced housing is beyond the bottom right of this view if not obscured by trees.The vista shown is taken at a point where the Luton Valley splits into a series of valleys entering the north downs and is a mixture of 20th Century housing developments and conserved green areas.Tophouseman (talk) 09:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Chatham transport
There appears to be much in the article about chatham's road problems but not much about the history of its rail links and nothing at all about its former tram systems.Tophouseman (talk) 09:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Sharks?
Can anyone back up the claim that Great White Shark have been spotted at Chatham? I do not recall reading any such news at the time (and I think there would have been) and a quick browse on google leads me to suspect the sharks were visiting Chatham in Massachusetts USA not Medway UK. I've deleted this section for the time being. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.127.96.6 (talk) 17:13, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 14:30, 1 May 2016 (UTC)