Visitor News and updates for February 2022
Published 2 February 2022
Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall received a warm welcome at two Medway tourist attractions today.
Her Royal Highness visited Rochester to open a new permanent exhibition, The Making of Mr Dickens, at The Guildhall Museum whilst His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales visited the Historic Dockyard Chatham.
Touring the new exhibition, which opens to the public on Tuesday, 8 February, Her Royal Highness learned about the relatively-unknown side of Dickens’ life including his happy and adventurous childhood in Chatham, the sad days spent living hand to mouth in London, and his return to Higham, near Rochester, from Dr Jeremy Clarke, the council’s Heritage Education Officer and Dickens expert.
Her Royal Highness was greeted by characters in Victorian costume from The Rochester and Chatham Dickens Fellowship and joined by Year 5 pupils from St Margaret's at Troy Town C of E Primary School who were learning about Dickens.
The schoolchildren were inspired by a reading of Great Expectations by Her Royal Highness and Gerald Dickens, Charles Dickens’ great, great grandson.
His Royal Highness is patron of the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust (CHDT) and was shown the new Diving Deep: HMS Invincible 1744 display – the dockyard's temporary exhibition for 2022. Her Royal Highness also met members of the Medway Aircraft Preservation Society.
