Whispers of the Past

The Oral History Archive at Chatham Historic Dockyard provides an insight into the daily routines of people who worked at the dockyard and in the navy and those who lived in the Medway Towns. In collaboration with Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, we borrowed and digitised those archives, and we enriched them with new interviews we conducted of former dockyard workers. Within these recordings, old and new, men and women share their stories detailing their daily routines while working at the yard. They tell us about the impact of conflict on their lives and the chaos that ensued as a result of wars. We hear personal accounts, moving stories, descriptions, memories and anecdotes that become vivid and alive again through the voices of those who experienced them.

We will be discussing our experience of creating ‘Whispers of the Past’, a collection of miniatures that explores stories from archives from men and women who worked at the Chatham Dockyard before its closure in 1984. It was first presented as a geolocated soundwalk at the Chatham Historic Dockyard maritime heritage site, as part of the Electric Medway Festival, and remains a permanent feature at the Dockyard Museum.