Rochester & Strood Constituency: Located in north Kent alongside the River Medway estuary with the River Thames on its north border. Based on the Medway Towns of Chatham, Rochester and Strood and the villages of Strood Rural and the Hoo Peninsula.

The Medway Towns, covered in the main by some two and half parliamentary constituencies, is a thriving city in all but name. Medway or Medway Towns are the collective names for the single conurbation, the largest conurbation in south east England outside London that compasses the towns of Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham and their surrounding areas. Additionally there are several rural settlements on the Hoo Peninsula and on the west bank of the Medway valley.

The area has a wide range of historic and natural assets including the castles at Rochester-upon-Medway, Upnor and Cooling, Rochester Cathedral and city centre, the Chatham Historic Dockyard, Fort Amherst, the Royal Engineers' Museum and a variety of urban and rural conservation areas. The area's attractive countryside includes part of North Kent Marshes and River Medway Estuary (which have the highest international nature conservation designations) and part of the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Rochester is best known for Charles Dickens who lived nearby at Gad's Hill, Higham, and who based many of his novels in the area. Descriptions of the town appear in Pickwick 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 area has also seen significant change over the last ten years with a focus in education, The area now boasts a number of sites of learning including the University of Greenwich, University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University and the development of the new purpose Mid-Kent College site. In addition, in celebration of the diversity of the town the University of the Creative Arts has one of its sites in Rochester and is considering relocating as a whole to a single campus in Medway.

For more information on Rochester & Strood please Visit Medway