St. Mary's Island, Chatham Maritime
"Chatham Maritime" is marketing bollocks-speak for what used to be the Royal Naval Dockyard at Chatham, except for the section retained as a museum. It has a cinema, an outlet mall, a few middling pubs and chain restaurants, oh and "Dickens World", the South of England's premier (i.e. only) Dickens-related theme park. It's quite a nice place, well by Medway standards at least.

Right at the northern end though, separated from the nice(-ish) pubs and restaurants by one of the old docks, lies St. Mary's Island. St. Mary's Island is a recent housing development. Lots of yuppy-tastic townhouses and "executive" dwellings, it's prime real estate and properties there go for way more than the little two-up, two-down terraces that make up 95% of the rest of the area. I'm sure St. Mary's Island is a *lovely* place to live and bring up a family.

It's also where the Royal Navy used to decommission old reactors from nuclear submarines. There are persistent rumours locally that the residents of the island are warned not to grow vegetables in their gardens.

But more than that there's something indefinably creepy about the place. We'd some summers have a drink ouside the pub across the dock from the island, but there was always something sinister about the town-houses across the water. I don't know how to describe it other than that the windows looked "dead". And whilst there was always plenty of traffic to and fro across the swing bridge to the island, you never, ever saw anybody there - no-one walking about, no-one sitting out on the balconies, not even in the best of weather.

All I know is that there's no way I'd live there, and if I had to nominate a Place Most Likely To Have A Mutant Zombie Outbreak, St Mary's Island would be my choice.
(Vainomoinen went looking for the Sampo on, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 16:16, 7 replies)

Sounds a bit like Bolnore Village
Freaking place looks like something out of the stepford wives - can't stand driving through 'upper village' or whatever twonk they call it.
( fluffymitten NAN, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 20:50, closed)

Oooh, You're from my neck of the woods!
I am a fellow medway resident, and I've never thought about St Mary's Island in that way... until now!

I don't like the way the houses sit right by the eerily still water.
( WeakLemonDrink, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 21:52, closed)

Actually,
We just moved to New York. Now living in Tarrytown, NY which is a comparable commute to NYC as Gillingham was to London but much, much nicer!
(Vainomoinen went looking for the Sampo on, Mon 11 Apr 2011, 23:04, closed)

Fair enough! :)
I'm insanely jealous!

Do you ever get nostalgic for good ol' Medway? :)
( WeakLemonDrink, Tue 12 Apr 2011, 22:44, closed)

Well I've only been here three months so far...
...but not yet!
(Vainomoinen went looking for the Sampo on, Tue 12 Apr 2011, 23:33, closed)

Ahahahahaaa, priceless
I work for the company that built all those soulless boxes. They made us go round it as an "example of what we are all working towards". Made me want to blow my brains out. It is creepy and corporate. It's the epitomy of the marketing peoples "buy a lifetsyle" vision. They are, as I think of them, I-Homes. They look dead because they are, pre-created packaged little communities for the middle classes.

Glad to see it's not just me they creep out.
(Booce, Tue 12 Apr 2011, 16:26, closed)

So is it true?
That the residents are forbidden from growing veggies in their gardens because of the history of nuclear decommissioning?
(Vainomoinen went looking for the Sampo on, Tue 12 Apr 2011, 17:37, closed)