Queenborough

Queenborough is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England. Queenborough is south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to the Swale where it joins the River Medway. It is in the Sittingbourne and Sheppey parliamentary constituency. Queenborough Harbour offers moorings between the Thames and Medway. It is possible to land at Queenborough on any tide and there are boat builders and chandlers in the marina. Admiral Lord Nelson is reputed to have learned many of his seafaring skills in these waters, and also shared a house near the small harbour with his mistress, Lady Hamilton. Queenborough today still reflects something of its original 18th-century seafaring history, from which period most of its more prominent buildings survive. The church is the sole surviving feature from the medieval period. The town was first represented by two members of parliament in 1572. In Saxon times, the settlement on the site was known as Cyningburh, "king's borough". A fortress, called Sheppey Castle or Queenborough Castle, was built to guard the passage of ships along the Swale upon the command of King Edward III between 1361 and 1377, during the Hundred Years' War with France. It was built on the site of a much earlier, but smaller castle. Its unusual design – round and symmetrical – was described by historians Howard Colvin and R. Allen Brown as "exemplifying the principles of cylindrical and concentric fortification carried to their logical conclusion with perfect symmetry". They also suggest that the design, which bore similarities to Henry VIII's Device Forts of the 16th century, may have been designed to defend against and to make best use of gunpowder artillery. Queenborough was the only true concentric castle built in England. It regained importance in the 16th century under Thomas Cheney, when it is thought to have influenced the construction of nearby Deal Castle and Walmer Castle. In those days north Kent was divided by open waters and marshes stretching inland.