Chatham Intra

HTA’s Landscape team worked closely with planners and community partners to explore how heritage and place identity could shape the future public realm of Chatham Intra. The work focused on how streets, spaces and movement networks could reinforce local character while creating new opportunities for social, economic and ecological growth.

Our landscape input helped define the SPD’s spatial principles, particularly around improving pedestrian experience, enhancing biodiversity and supporting active frontages. The team mapped key assets, thresholds and views that anchor the area’s sense of place — and shaped proposals to reinforce and celebrate them.

A central theme was connectivity: stitching together the fragmented waterfront and high street into a more walkable, welcoming environment. The SPD encourages use of soft landscape and sustainable drainage to reintroduce nature to the urban fabric. It also highlights opportunities for small-scale interventions that can incrementally improve the quality of the public realm while supporting local enterprise and social activity.

Through landscape-led thinking, the framework offers a vision for a resilient and accessible high street that grows from its past but speaks confidently to its future.

HTA’s Planning team led the creation of the ‘Star Hill to Sun Pier’ Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for Chatham Intra, a historically significant section of the Medway waterfront. Commissioned under Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zone programme, the SPD sets out a robust framework for future growth that protects and enhances local heritage while enabling sustainable regeneration.

Our approach was shaped by deep engagement with the local community, Medway Council and Historic England. Through workshops, exhibitions and a final placemaking symposium in April 2023, we gathered public insight that directly influenced the strategy’s development and priorities. The SPD was formally adopted in 2024.

The final document offers a clear and practical guide for decision-makers, developers and designers, enabling delivery of a high-quality urban environment that celebrates Intra’s layered history. Planning policies within the SPD support biodiversity, sustainable transport, and new development that is responsive to the existing character and identity of the area. It is a blueprint for heritage-led regeneration — one that allows for change while safeguarding what makes Chatham Intra special.

In parallel with the SPD, HTA produced a Heritage & Wayfinding Strategy for Medway Council to help reconnect Chatham’s high street with its wider historic assets. Working in collaboration across planning and landscape teams, the strategy explored how visual and experiential cues could be used to tell stories, aid navigation and reinforce the area’s identity.

The process began with on-site analysis and a review of existing signage and movement routes. We identified two key routes of opportunity: one linking Chatham Railway Station with the Historic Dockyard, and the other following the high street corridor through Intra to Rochester. Based on these, we developed two narrative-led visual concepts.

The ‘yellow thread’ concept references the rope-dyeing traditions of Chatham’s naval past, proposing a continuous visual cue that draws visitors through the area. The ‘dazzle’ concept draws inspiration from naval camouflage patterns, bringing bold, graphic interventions into public space.

The strategy complements the SPD by grounding future wayfinding and interpretation in local heritage – offering a cohesive, place-specific identity that supports cultural tourism, legibility and pride of place.