Queenborough is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England.
Queenborough is south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to the Swale where it joins the River Medway. It is in the Sittingbourne and Sheppey parliamentary constituency.
Queenborough Harbour offers moorings between the Thames and Medway. It is possible to land at Queenborough on any tide and there are boat builders and chandlers in the marina. Admiral Lord Nelson is reputed to have learned many of his seafaring skills in these waters, and also shared a house near the small harbour with his mistress, Lady Hamilton.
Queenborough today still reflects something of its original 18th-century seafaring history, from which period most of its more prominent buildings survive. The church is the sole surviving feature from the medieval period. The town was first represented by two members of parliament in 1572.
History
Saxon
In Saxon times, the settlement on the site was known as Cyningburh, "king's borough".
Medieval and Tudor
A fortress, called Sheppey Castle or Queenborough Castle, was built to guard the passage of ships along the Swale upon the command of King Edward III between 1361 and 1377, during the Hundred Years' War with France. It was built on the site of a much earlier, but smaller castle. Its unusual design – round and symmetrical – was described by historians Howard Colvin and R. Allen Brown as "exemplifying the principles of cylindrical and concentric fortification carried to their logical conclusion with perfect symmetry". They also suggest that the design, which bore similarities to Henry VIII's Device Forts of the 16th century, may have been designed to defend against and to make best use of gunpowder artillery. Queenborough was the only true concentric castle built in England. It regained importance in the 16th century under Thomas Cheney, when it is thought to have influenced the construction of nearby Deal Castle and Walmer Castle.
In those days north Kent was divided by open waters and marshes stretching inland. The safest navigation to the open sea was then the route from the Thames into the Yantlet Creek (separating the Isle of Grain from the rest of Hoo Peninsula), and thus into the Swale from the Medway estuary, around the leeward side of the Isle of Sheppey into the Wantsum Channel, navigating past the Isle of Thanet to Sandwich and only then into the open waters of the English Channel. It was thus an easily defensible planned-town centre for the wool trade.
King Edward III had the town renamed after his Queen, Philippa of Hainault, and conferred upon it the rights of a free borough, with a governing body of a mayor and two bailiffs. He granted Queenborough a charter in 1366 and two years later bestowed the duties of a royal borough upon it.
During this period, Queenborough, on the Isle of Sheppey, was an important town for the export of wool, a significant crown revenue. In 1368, the Wool Staple was transferred from Canterbury to Queenborough: Sandwich and Queenborough became the two centres in Kent for wool trading.
The castle was excavated in 2005 by Channel 4's archaeology television programme Time Team.
The town was first represented by two members of parliament in 1572, one of its earlier MPs being explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1580. Matthias Falconer of Brabant established the first copperas factory in England at Queenborough in 1579.
17th century
King Charles I had the town reincorporated under the title of the "mayor, jurats, bailiffs and burgesses of Queenborough", during which time the population was chiefly employed in the local oyster fishery. However the fort having protected the Swale and Medway estuaries for 300 years was never in fact to realise its function as a garrison, and recorded no active military history. After being seized by Parliamentarians in 1650, after the Civil War, and being considered unsuitable for repair, being of "no practical use" it was demolished during the interregnum.