Chatham Dockyard covered 400 acres (1.6 km2) and was one of the Royal Navy's main facilities for several hundred years until it was closed in 1984.
80 acres (324,000 m2), comprising the 18th-century core of the site, was transferred to a charity called the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and is now open as a visitor attraction.
[2] The attraction has seven main elements: Workers at the dockyard performed eight years of restoration work on the MV Havengore, the ceremonial vessel that carried the body of Winston Churchill during his state funeral.
In addition the dockyard acted as custodian of artefacts, masts and rigging from the Cutty Sark and the Medway Queen, while their hulls were being restored elsewhere.
The site is also home to a dockyard railway that has a diverse collection of locomotives and rolling stock, some of which can be seen in operation throughout the year.