Chatham Historic Dockyard is one of the best-preserved historic dockyards in the world, covering 80 acres of the former Royal Navy facility that operated here from the time of Henry VIII until its closure in 1984. The scale of what remains is genuinely impressive: rope-making buildings hundreds of metres long, Georgian storehouses, Victorian covered slips, and a collection of historic vessels including a Victorian sloop, a Second World War destroyer, and a Cold War submarine.
A full visit easily takes a half-day, and the site repays the time. The ropery — still in working order and the last surviving ropewalk in Britain — is particularly memorable. There are good interactive displays on naval life and shipbuilding, and the sheer physical fabric of the place, the smell of tar and timber, the sense of industrial history on an enormous scale, makes it unlike almost anywhere else in southern England. It sits about five minutes' drive from Rochester town centre, or is walkable in around 20 minutes along the riverside.