General News3rd December 2018

Heritage Angel

The Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust is delighted to announce they have won the award for Best Major Regeneration of a Historic Building or place at the Historic England Heritage Angel Awards 2018. This award comes in the year that the Dockyard celebrates its 400^th anniversary on the site, a place where the innovation of people has contributed to British history throughout its life.

This prestigious award recognises projects that have seen large scale investment put into saving, rescuing or regenerating a building or place. The award criteria look for the need of the specific project, completeness, passion, perseverance, legacy, and imagination. This category includes locally and nationally listed buildings that appear on a recognised heritage register.

Judges noted the long-term commitment invested in the site describing success as being down to “sheer dogged determination and hard work”

Over the last 34 years, The Historic Dockyard Chatham has undertaken a strategy of “Preservation through reuse” that has seen the 80-acre historic site transformed from a dilapidated post-industrial site into a thriving mixed-use community which is visited by over 185,000 visitors each year. Over 100 businesses and 400 people also call this place home – utilising 47 Scheduled Ancient Monuments and Listed Buildings alongside a total of 100 buildings across the wider site.

Command of the Oceans featured in the “Heritage Angels award was a project (opened in 2016), which has since won numerous other awards for its architecture and the visitor experience it creates.

This award comes at the end of The Historic Dockyard’s Festival 400 celebrations, marking 400 years of the most complete dockyard of the age of sail in the world. 2018 has truly been a landmark year for The Historic Dockyard, with record visitor numbers and a whole host of other awards that recognise the Dockyard’s impact to the community and visitor experience, including: