City and Region: Rochester Bridge Trust

The Rochester Bridge Trust

For centuries the people of Kent have maintained a bridge across the River Medway at Rochester. The earliest surviving written evidence of Rochester Bridge in the twelfth-century Textus Roffensis assigned to 54 parishes, manors, and estates surrounding Rochester the responsibility by ancient custom for repairing and maintaining the bridge. By Letters Patent of Richard II these contributory parishes were constituted a commonalty in 1399 and were charged to elect two wardens to oversee the maintenance and repair of the bridge. The Rochester Bridge Act 1576 reformed the Wardens and Commonalty of Rochester Bridge, requiring householders from the commonalty to assemble each year at Rochester Castle to elect two wardens, twelve assistants, and four auditors. This system continued for over three centuries, until the Rochester Bridge Act 1908 abolished the annual election and provided for the nomination of the wardens and assistants by local authorities. For most of the twentieth century there were seventeen wardens and assistants nominated by the Kent County Council, the city of Rochester, the boroughs of Chatham, Gillingham, and Maidstone, and the various river authorities eventually united in the Medway Ports Limited. Since 1999 a new Charity Commission scheme has provided for twelve wardens and assistants: three nominated by Medway Council, two by Kent County Council, one by Maidstone Borough Council, and six assistants appointed by the Trust from the community.

The Rochester Bridge Trust has built and maintained numerous Medway crossings since medieval times. In the late fourteenth century the old Roman bridge at Rochester was replaced by a stone bridge with eleven arches and a drawbridge. During the early nineteenth century concern about the deposit of silt in the riverbed led to the alteration of the medieval bridge to provide a large central arch and eventually in 1856 to the construction of a new cast iron bridge with three arches and a swing bridge to allow ships with fixed masts to navigate upriver. Between 1910 and 1914 this Victorian bridge was reconstructed, moving the arches to their present position above the roadway in order to provide more clearance for shipping under the bridge. Between 1965 and 1970 the Rochester Bridge Trust built a second roadway bridge of concrete and steel box girders resting on the piers of the disused railway bridge immediately downstream from the reconstructed Victorian bridge. Over the years other Medway crossings supported by the Rochester Bridge Trust have included the Great Bridge at Tonbridge, the Branbridges at East Peckham, the Bow Bridge at Wateringbury, the Maidstone Bridge, and the Medway Tunnel between Chatham Dockyard and Frindsbury peninsula.

During the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV, Sir John de Cobham and other benefactors endowed the Wardens and Commonalty of Rochester Bridge with lands in London, Kent and Essex, the income from which was to be used for the repair and maintenance of Rochester Bridge. The estate records and financial records generated by the administration of these ancient properties provide the bulk of the rent data and images in the Rochester Bridge Trust collection. The 1888 Charity Commission Scheme granted the Wardens and Commonalty powers to buy and sell land, and since that time some of these properties have been sold and other properties purchased and investments made in their place. All of the estate records, both old and new, are maintained by the Rochester Bridge Trust at their premises in the Bridge Chamber and may be consulted by appointment with Dr. James M. Gibson, Bridge Archivist, The Bridge Chamber, 5 Esplanade, Rochester, Kent ME1 1QE. The online archive catalogue can be searched at www.rbt.org.uk.

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