Rochester is a town and former city in Kent, England. It is located within the unitary authority area of Medway and is at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (48 km) from London. The town is known for its cathedral and castle, and for an epic siege in 1215.Rochester, together with neighbouring Chatham, Gillingham, Strood and a number of outlying villages, makes up the Medway unitary authority area.A familiar site in and around Rochester are the distinctive Purple and Yellow Markes Ices ice cream vans seen at many Rochester events.
Based in Gillingham Markes Ices have many satisfied clients and work closely with many local school PTA officials helping raise funds for school projects.
For Ice Cream Van Hire in Rochester or the surrounding Medway towns speak to the booking team today to discuss your event.
Rochester has many historic sites perfect for that special wedding day celebration, to add an ice cream van for your wedding day catering in Rochester then welcome to the UK's number one ice cream van hire company as voted for by their customers for the past two years.Markes Ices once again will attend many events in Historic Higham and Gads Hill.
CHARLES DICKENS
The town was for many years the favourite of Charles Dickens who lived nearby at Gads Hill Place, Higham, and who based many of his novels in the area. Descriptions of the town appear inPickwick Papers, Great Expectations and lightly fictionalised as Cloisterham in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Restoration house located on Crow Lane was the house on which Charles Dickens based Miss Havisham's (from Great Expectations) house, Satis House. This link is celebrated in Rochester's Dickens Festival each June in the Summer Dickens Festival and December with the Dickensian Christmas Festival. The 16th century red-brick Eastgate House once housed the town's museum. In the 1980s the museum was moved further west to the Guildhall so that Eastgate House could become the Charles Dickens Centre.
In the same decade the High Street was redecorated with Victorian-style street lights and hanging flower baskets to give it a more welcoming atmosphere.
The Dickens Centre was ultimately unprofitable and shut in November 2004. Medway Council's Cabinet agreed proposals for the restoration and development of Eastgate House as a major cultural and tourist facility, and for the project to be recognised as a key cultural regeneration project on 7 November 2006.
SWEEPS FESTIVAL
Since 1980 the town has seen the revival of the historic Rochester Jack-in-the-Green May Day dancing chimney sweeps tradition, which died out in the early 1900s. Whilst not unique to Rochester (similar sweeps gatherings were held right across southern England, notably in Bristol, Deptford, Whitstable and Hastings), the Rochester revival was directly inspired by Dickens' description of the celebration in Sketches by Boz.
The festival has since grown from a small gathering of local Morris dance sides to one of the largest in the world.
The current festival begins with the awakening of the Jack-in-the-Green ceremony, at Blue Bell Hill at sunrise on 1 May and continues in Rochester High Street over the May Bank Holiday weekend.
There are numerous other festivals in Rochester apart from the Sweeps Festival. A summer Dickens Festival takes place in early June and a Christmas one in early December. The Medway Fuse Festival usually has performances in Rochester and the latest festival to take shape is the Rochester Literature Festival, the offspring of three local writers.
For all ice cream van hire in and around Rochester contact Markes Ices at http://www.markesices.co.uk/ice_cream_van_hire_rochester.html
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