Borstal is a location in the

Medway Medway is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in the ceremonial county of Kent in South East England. It was formed in 1998 by merging the boroughs of City of Roche ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a type of local government, local authority in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Unitary authorities are responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England, regions of England that are in the ITL 1 statistical regions of England, top level category for Statistics, statistical purposes. It consists of the nine counties of england, ...

. Originally a village near Rochester, it has become absorbed by the expansion of that town. The youth prison at Borstal gave its name to the

Borstal A borstal is a type of youth detention centre. Such a detention centre is more commonly known as a borstal school in India, where they remain in use today. Until the late 20th century, borstals were present in the United Kingdom, several mem ...

reform school system.

History

Its name came from

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

''burg-steall'' "fort site" or "place of refuge",Glover, Judith. ''The Place Names of Kent'', Batsford, 1976. likely referring to the hill there. The hill is now home to Fort Borstal. However, artist Donald Maxwell, a local resident, argued that a 'borstal' was "a track up a chalk hill", saying he had heard local farmers use the term in that way. (Maxwell lived at No. 3 Borstal Villas from 1908 to 1930.) The village is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 as ''Borchetelle'', and then consisted of a 50-acre meadow, six households and two watermills. By 1769 this riverside farm was called Bostle, and probably had been joined by a wayside inn called the White Horse on the valley road above. In about 1830 Borstal House was built near the farm, and at the time of the 1840s Tithe Map the settlement was just a hamlet of a few cottages, mostly owned by local woman Mary Tuff. She sold her nearby lime-works in 1853, which was developed into a cement factory owned from 1864 by London solicitor Samuel Barker Booth. Its success led to the hamlet's growth into a village of terraced houses with two new pubs, shops and a workmen's institute. A second cement factory, called Borstal Manor, opened in 1898 near the original Domesday settlement. Both works closed in 1900, but continued to produce cement intermittently until about 1920. The village went into a decline when its factories closed, but underwent a resurgence of new house-building in the 1930s, when it became a suburb of Rochester. Borstal House, by then renamed Borstal Manor, was demolished in about 1960. The western end of the meadow mentioned in Domesday Book is now crossed by the M2 motorway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The rest of it has been built on. The parish church, built in 1879, is dedicated to

St Matthew Matthew the Apostle was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. According to Christian traditions, he was also one of the four Evangelists as author of the Gospel of Matthew, and thus is also known as Matthew the Evangelist. The claim of his g ...

. It was built on land donated by Mary Tuff's son Thomas, who also dedicated a window in the church to Saints Matthew and Margaret. Another window is dedicated to Marian Tuff, the wife of Rochester MP Charles Tuff Jr. (the grandson of Mary), and her sister Martha Emily Browne.

Fort Borstal

Fort Borstal was built as an afterthought from the 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, by convict labour between 1875 and 1885. A narrow gauge railway called the Eastern Defences Railway was built from a pier on the

River Medway The River Medway is a river in South East England. It rises in the High Weald AONB, High Weald, West Sussex and flows through Tonbridge, Maidstone and the Medway conurbation in Kent, before emptying into the Thames Estuary near Sheerness, a to ...

at Borstal, up the hillside to the fort, and on to Forts Bridgewood, Horsted and Luton to transfer materials and convict labourers to the building sites.Lyne, R.M. ''Military Railways of Kent'', North Kent Books, 1983. Fort Borstal is of polygonal design and was never originally armed. An

anti-aircraft Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-ba ...

battery was based there in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. It is now in private ownership.

Prisons

On the edge of Borstal are

HM Prison Rochester HM Prison Rochester (formerly known as Borstal Convict Prison and Borstal Institution) is a male Young Offenders Institution, founded in 1874, and located in the Borstal area of Rochester in Kent, England. The prison is operated by His Majest ...

and

HM Prison Cookham Wood HM Prison Cookham Wood is a male young persons' prison and Young Offenders Institution in the village of Borstal (near Rochester) in Kent, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison and probation Service. This prison has now been r ...

. HM Prison Rochester was originally known as Borstal Prison and was founded in 1870; it became for many years an experimental juvenile prison of the reformatory type set up in 1902. Because it was the first detention centre of its kind in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, the word "

" became synonymous with other detention centres for youths across the country, and elsewhere. In view of that connotation, the prison was renamed 'Rochester

Young Offenders Institution In criminal justice systems, a youth detention center, known as a juvenile detention center (JDC),Stahl, Dean, Karen Kerchelich, and Ralph De Sola. ''Abbreviations Dictionary''. CRC Press, 20011202. Retrieved 23 August 2010. , . juvenile det ...

'. HM Prison Cookham Wood was added to the site later, in 1978.

References

Bibliography

*Austin, John K. ''The Medway Shore as It Was: Burham to Borstal'', Rainmore Books (2007). *Bergess, Winifred F., and Sage, Stephen. ''Five Medway Villages: Pictorial History of Aylesford, Burham, Wouldham, Eccles and Borstal'', Meresborough Books (1983). *Hannington, Stephen. ''Out of the Shadows, A History of Borstal Village 1840–1914'', Birch Leaf Books (2015).

External links

Borstal website, including history
(village and prison) {{Medway Places in Medway