Medway adventure

The adventures of The Grey Cardigan and Wigilicious.

On Saturday TGC and Wigilicious decided to visit the Guildhall museum in Rochester, unfortunately we didn't have our wiggies to hand but fun was had none-the-less. First impressions; the museum entrance is hidden away off the main high street of Rochester with an easily missed sign pointing the way, you're initially greeted with a sign saying it's free, the building looked small and everything tells you it's going to be a two-bit museum with a couple of objects on a table in the middle of a big room. How wrong we were.

The museum tracks the history of the Medway area from prehistoric time to modern times (sort of), to be honest the beginning bits aren't that interesting unless you find flint arrows and axes exciting. Things start to improve when we have a depiction of the siege of Rochester castle with the aid of a pretty detailed model, stories of how the castle has one round tower and three square should delight the grand children night after night. I never knew Pig fat was so versatile.

From this point the museum depicts the history and the Medway through the times of pirating and high sea adventures and how the Dutch raided up the river. Exciting stuff you'd agree. Then all of a sudden as you round a corner surrounded by riflemen, pikes and metal helmets you hear the distant strands of dance music. Oh yes, this museum has a cat walk.

Funnily enough I didn't take up the offer of strutting my stuff down the cat walk and we moved quickly on to what can seriously be called the best bit. The Hulks. Not a collection of pictures of the incredible hulk but a pretty good reconstruction of prison ships that used to be moored in the Medway holding up to 72000 prisoners in pretty horrific conditions over three floors of the building. The first room, the deck, cunningly made to appear bigger by the use of mirrors. The second floor showing how these boats were stripped before being used as prison vessels and the third floor that has the solitary confinement room. I have to admit this stuff was morbid and I loved it. For info the use of prison ships was stopped in the late 1800s and yet we here stories of prison ships being used nowadays due to over-crowding in prisons. Nice.

After that is the Victorian section in the second building across the way, but that was rubbish.