HMS Gannet in a dry dock at Chatham Historic Dockyard

11Active - 2026

Kent

Where England meets the sea

Kent is England’s sea frontier, and for three centuries Chatham on the Medway was one of the places the nation built its fleet. The archive’s Kent work begins there - in the Historic Dockyard, and in the quarter-mile Ropery still making rope by hand inside it.

1 Areas documented

400+ Years of ropemaking at Chatham

2 Archive entries published

1 Working naval ropeyard left in Britain

Documented Subjects

The People of Kent

The people the archive has documented in this region. Each is a full documentary record - photographs, field notes, the trade in their own words.

The Sea Frontier, and the Yard

Kent faces the Continent across the narrowest reach of sea, and that geography made it a naval county. At Chatham, on the Medway, the Crown laid out a dockyard in the sixteenth century and built warships here for the next four hundred years - HMS Victory among them. The Navy left in 1984, but the oldest heart of the yard survives as one of the most complete dockyards of the age of sail anywhere in the world.

For the archive, the county’s first subject is the craft that rigged all those ships: rope. The Ropery at Chatham is a quarter-mile ropewalk where naval cordage has been made for over four hundred years and is still made today, by hand. Kent will grow beyond it - but this is where the archive’s work in the county starts.

Region at a Glance

Areas documented 1

Ropemaking at Chatham 400+ yrs

Published 2

Status Active - 2026

Key Locations

Areas in Kent

Chatham Historic Dockyard

The Royal Navy’s old shipbuilding yard on the Medway, Tudor in origin and closed in 1984, now a working museum - and the home of the Ropery, the last working naval ropeyard in Britain.

2 subjects Makers Explore →

From this Region

Archive & Essays

Makers

Documentary Archive November 2026

David Cheer, Master Ropemaker

David Cheer is the master ropemaker at the Ropery in Chatham Historic Dockyard, the last working naval ropeyard in Britain. He came for a three-month job twenty-seven years ago and never left: after a year he decided rope-making was the only thing he wanted to do, and he has been the master here ever since. He makes every kind of rope the works still sells - from heavy cordage to dog leads and climbing line - splices and knots by hand, and keeps, among much else, what he says is the only length of sealskin rope left in England.

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Makers Apprentice