DO YOU HAVE CIVIC PRIDE? I’m sure you do.  Here’s a book that positively sparkles with pride. It’s mine. My parents bought it in 1961 when Rochester was celebrating 500 years of the mayoralty. 

I remember it well. Our headmaster, Mr Geater, spoke to we infants at St Matthew's, Borstal, about the city’s history, why it was important and why we should grow up to be good citizens. How many head teachers would do that now?

Of course, a cynic would say that it was all pretty pompous and just an excuse for a bunfight among the mayor and corporation – a pretty fine bunch of fat cats, to judge by their photographs in the front.

The mayor then was Jack Phillips, later governor of my old school, the  Math. He looks the very model of the modern politician, 1961 style. Other names include F Corry, C H R  Skipper, L E D Darley (a man about whom I have heard nothing nice said), G A Tickner and, of course, the town clerk P H Bartlett.

Bartlett speaks passionately about why Rochester is important in history and the present and why it has the honour of being a city. It makes my blood boil that one of his successors, a chief executive of Medway Council, managed to lose Rochester’s city status.

Aren’t the advertisements superb? The best of the small handful featured here must be for the Esplanade engineering factory CAV. It was in the shadow (just about) of the  castle and was honoured to say so. Linking fuel injection equipment with a  Norman fortification took quite a leap of faith, but it works.

Leonards was also proud, with its brick crown perched above a fine piece of typography. I can barely recall going into this Rochester High Street department store  and remember it better as in interminable hole in the ground opposite the old Math School after its demolition in the late 1960s. But it looks wonderful. Why don’t we have stores like that now?

Harwoods in Strood and on the Rochester-Chatham borders was similarly luxurious but trendier.

An undistinguished visit

SHORTLY AFTER WRITING THE ABOVE PIECE, I went over to Rochester and immediately found a distinct lack of pride. I was meeting a former News reporter now living in Australia and back to see the old country.

We decided to meet in the old News pub (name removed to protect the guilty but it wasn't the Rose & Crown, Von Alten or Ship. As I walked into the door, scenting filthy carpets, he bundled me out of the door. “They don’t have any beer!” he exclaimed. 

We repaired to a nearby inn and started chatting. We were the only two customers, so the barmaids turned the jukebox well above conversation level.

Beer unfinished, we then left Rochester.

Or perhaps you think I am being unfair? Drop me an email.

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