Chatham Historic Dockyard

Records of the ships built at Chatham go back to 1646. At its height the dockyard covered 400 acres, and it produced hundreds of warships, some of which can still be seen today. Among them is HMS Victory, the 100-gun first rate launched in 1765 and Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, now preserved in dry dock at Portsmouth. HMS Unicorn, a 54-gun fifth rate launched in 1824, is preserved afloat at Dundee. The submarine HMS Ocelot, launched on 5 May 1962, remains in dry dock at Chatham itself.

Chatham was also a place of learning. It housed the first Dockyard School, later followed by Devonport and Portsmouth. It had one of the best technical schools in England and accepted students from overseas dockyards such as Gibraltar and Malta.

The dockyard closed on 31 March 1984 and was divided into three. The easternmost basin became a commercial port, and another portion was turned into a mixed commercial, residential and leisure development. The 80-acre 18th-century core passed to the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, a charity, and is now open to visitors. In 1995 the remains of the warship Namur were discovered beneath the floor of the Wheelwrights' Shop. That find paved the way for the Command of the Oceans project, which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2017.

Today the dockyard's main attractions include three historic warships: HMS Gannet of 1878, HMS Cavalier and the submarine HMS Ocelot. There is also the Grade I listed Ropery, a Georgian and Victorian rope factory, and Steam, Steel and Submarines, which tells the story of the dockyard and the Royal Navy's use of the River Medway in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lifeboat is a museum of the RNLI's work with 17 historical vessels. 3 Slip – The BIG Store is a former covered slipway filled with large objects from the dockyard and the nearby Royal Engineers Museum. No 1 Smithery, once used for iron-working, reopened in July 2010 as a visitor and exhibition centre. It also houses 4,000 ship models from the National Maritime Museum and Imperial War Museums.

The site is also home to a dockyard railway, with a diverse collection of locomotives and rolling stock, some of which can be seen in operation throughout the year. Screen fans may recognise corners of the yard from Call the Midwife, The Crown, Downton Abbey, Les Misérables and many other productions filmed here.