Gillingham

History

There is a Stone Age barrow in the town, and evidence of Roman settlement in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; however the town was established by the Saxons. The church of St Mary the Virgin has a Saxon cross shaft dating from the 9th century. The name Gillingham was used for the town in its 10th century Saxon charter, and also in an entry for 1016 in the annals, as the location of a battle between King Edmund Ironside and Danish King Cnut. In the Domesday Book in 1086 it is recorded as Gelingeham, and later spellings include Gellingeham in 1130, Gyllingeham in 1152 and Gilingeham in 1209. The name derives from a personal name plus the Old English and , and means a homestead of the family or followers of a man called Gylla. In the Middle Ages, Gillingham was the site of a royal hunting lodge, visited by kings Henry I, Henry II, John and Henry III. A nearby royal forest, Gillingham Forest, was set aside for the king's deer. The lodge fell into disrepair and was destroyed in 1369 by Edward III. Edward Rawson, the first secretary to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was born in Gillingham. Gillingham became a local farming centre, gained the first grammar school in Dorset in 1516 and a silk mill in 1769. Gillingham's church has a 14th-century chancel, though most of the rest of the building was built in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many other buildings in the town are of Tudor origin. In the 1820s, the artist John Constable stayed at Gillingham vicarage and, being impressed by the beauty of the countryside, executed several local sketches and paintings. His painting of the old town bridge is in the Tate Gallery. In the 1850s, the arrival of the railway to the town brought prosperity and new industries including brickmaking, cheese production, printing, soap manufacture and at…