Defining Troy Town

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Troy Town is an area of St Margaret's parish in Rochester lying to the south/south-east of the historic High Street. It was initially built up between the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. 

For the purposes of this study, the area extends from the south side of East Row to the north and as far as (but not including) Rochester Avenue to the south. From west to east it extends from the east side of the Maidstone road to the west side of Delce Road. The area is about a quarter of a mile square. The map below shows the area marked on a modern street plan.


The centre of Troy Town lies in a shallow valley. The land rises to the Maidstone Road in one direction and Delce Road in the other. It also rises to a lesser extent to the south. 


topographic-map.com

Below: looking along King Street from the junction with Delce Road to the Maidstone Road, showing the fall and rise of the land and the extent of the area east-west. 


This may seem like a small area on which to base an extended project. But locally Troy Town is not considered to extend further than this, and Rochester Avenue is a convenient cut-off point. Preliminary investigation showed that there will be no shortage of material. As well as the development of the streets, the people who developed them and the people who lived in them, and their work in and out of the area, there were shops, pubs, a school, a church, debt, crime and much else to research and write about. 

Next: the City of Rochester

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See my historical mystery fiction on Amazon Kindle here

The author has lived all her life in Kent, apart from a few years elsewhere as a student. She has a lifelong interest in local history, especially the history of Kent, and has been researching family history for decades. This blog brings together those interests in an ongoing study of the history of a small area of a smallish English city. The author also writes historical mystery fiction, which can be found on Amazon Kindle: see links at the foot of each blog post.

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