“As far as we're concerned it still is a city”

What Steven asked Rob Flood, chair of the City of Rochester Society, historian, and local podcaster

Rob Flood is the chair of the City of Rochester Society, a historian, and a newly minted podcaster. Steven met Rob in February, initially to discuss his podcast We Did It Medway. For a number of reasons, the launch of the podcast was delayed, and then an election was called, meaning this interview got stuck in limbo for a while.

Steven met Rob at No. 64 Coffee & Brunch, where they discussed the City of Rochester Society, Medway’s LGBT+ history, whether Rochester should have a town council, and lots more.

Rob Flood. Photo: Rikard Österlund

Where were you born?
Chatham, All Saints.

What did your parents do growing up?
My dad was always a self-employed builder with his own little building company with a partner. He would build extensions and loft conversions, that sort of thing. My mum did loads of different things. She was a cook, she used to do lots of work from home stuff. She used to make up wiring looms for Marconi, she drove for a sandwich delivery company. Oh, she worked in a doctor’s surgery.

Were they both from Medway?
Yeah, we go back a long way.

How did you find school?
I struggled at school. I went to the maths school. Passed my 11 plus, but always felt like I shouldn't. I was like, bottom of the pile, not particularly academic. I didn't like it that much.

Did you stay on for 6^th form?
I did, although I did try and leave halfway through, which didn't help my A-level results.

What did you specialise in?
I did English Literature, Geography, and Economics.

Why did you try to leave?
I just didn't enjoy it.

You're quite known now for history. There was no historical interest at school?
I suppose my interest in history comes from my dad who has always had loads of those photo books. Old photos, I used to love looking through those and recognising the places. I'd always loved going to old churches and all that sort of stuff. I found at school, we did sort of the Venerable Bede and all that sort of stuff which didn't relate to me. If I'm honest, music and girls got in the way of education.

Did you go to university?
I didn't, no. I left after A levels.

What was your first full-time job?
My first full-time job was working at Marconi Avionics as a commercial trainee, and I ended up becoming a contracts officer on something I can't tell you about because I signed the Official Secrets Act (laughs).

What is your official occupation now?
I'm a director of an audio-visual company. I do temporary audio-visual installations, for events, conferences, that sort of thing.

How did you get into that?
Fell into it really. I was selling event services for a company based up in town, left there and set up on my own. I was lucky to have a contact at the BBC who offered to give me work and that's grown from there.

What additional roles, paid or unpaid, do you do?
I'm chairman of the City of Rochester Society. I'm Vice Chair of the Friends of Medway Archives. I sit on the High Street Heritage Action Zone Cultural Consortium steering committee for the Intra area, although that project is coming to an end. I'm a Medway Champion. I'm a sometime music promoter, sometime DJ, and lots of fingers in lots of pies. And I’m a sometime author.

Rob Flood. Photo: Rikard Rikard Österlund

What is the City of Rochester Society?
The City of Rochester Society is an amenity society, a civic group, which was founded in 1967 on the back of an appalling planning decision that the then City of Rochester Corporation were going to make. They were going to create a dual carriageway around the north of Rochester. You would have come over the bridge from Strood into Rochester. Then you would have gone into a dual carriageway gyratory that would have taken you around onto the Esplanade, 50mph dual carriageway, up through the back of the Bishop of Rochester’s garden, across St Margaret Street, demolish the whole of King Edward Road, go through the Granville pub, then onto stilts, across the top of Troy Town, joining up with the top of Star Hill. It was a terrible, terrible idea that was opposed, surprise surprise, primarily by lots of people who lived in King Edward Road. Fortuitously, lots of them were professional people, lawyers, solicitors. These people galvanized themselves into this organisation to protest against it, and they came up with the proposal for what was known as the Southern Loop Road which is not quite Corporation Street as we know it today, but that was the genesis of the idea.
That then meant that this society was created. The great and the good, the likes of Hilary Halpern from Nucleus, who was one of the founder members, Ted Bates, who used to run Bates department store, which is where up until recently Argos was. Lots and lots of different people involved. This is very long answer.
They ended up setting up this organisation to lobby the council about various different things the council were planning to do. There was a proposal to widen Rochester High Street at one point, which would have changed the building line and would have demolished lots of the historic buildings in Rochester. It's quite vague about what the actual building line was. At one point, that was the main route. Corporation Street didn’t exist. Everything went up two-way traffic up Rochester High Street, including the trams at one point.
As the society grew, somebody within the society wanted to set up tour guides and we've been running volunteer tours of Rochester for 40 years. The free guided tours of Rochester High Street meet at the Visitor's Information Centre or the building that was the Visitor's Information Centre from the beginning of April to the end of September, every Wednesday afternoon and Saturday and Sunday afternoon at quarter past two, also every bank holiday, and they are completely free. If you think it's fantastic, you can make a donation at the end towards the work of the society, but completely free tours of Rochester. We set up the very first Tourist Information Centre in Rochester and came up with the concept of the Dickens Festival.

So, you’re to blame.