Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Kent from the s
Europe’s largest indoor shopping centre boasting hundreds of stores opened in 1999.
In all, 20,000 people worked 11.5 million hours during construction and John Lewis was the first major tenant to sign up in February 1995. Designed by architect Eric Kuhne, The main building is a triangle of three malls, with one anchor store at each corner.
BRANDS HATCH TEMPLE SCHOOL
Temple School, a secondary school for boys, closed in 2009 along with Chapter Girls when Strood Academy was opened.
BLUEWATER SAMPHIRE HOE
Created with the leftover spoil from the construction of the Channel Tunnel, the Samphire Hoe nature reserve opened to the public in 1997. Selected from 60 sites being considered, large lagoons were constructed and work platforms created. It now welcomes thousands of visitors each year and is home to an array of wildlife and rare plants.
Kent’s most famous race track had hosted its last Grand Prix in 1986 when Brit Nigel Mansell took a popular victory in front of an elated home crowd. But the circuit continued to host big events through the 1990s - a decade which saw international sportscars return to the venue and the current pits open.
The council wanted to designate Rochester Airport as land for industrial development, but a campaign group saved the site from closure in 1999 and thoughts turned to its longer-term preservation. Financial difficulties and planning disputes have since followed, but the airport is now subject to multi-million plans to create new a business development, Innovation Park.
The site became operational in 1922 and formerly produced newsprint for The Times, Mirror and The Observer.
Aylesford Newsprint fell into administration in 2015. Bulldozers moved in the following year and reduced the site - which produced on average 400,000 tonnes of recycled paper every year, and was one of three mills of its kind in the country - to rubble. The 100-acre plot between the M20 and the River Medway remains derelict and is dedicated for employment use in Tonbridge and Malling council’s Local Plan.
CHANNEL TUNNEL
One of the most ambitious construction projects in the world, the £4.65 billion Channel Tunnel opened in 1994. At the peak of construction 15,000 people were employed.
ROCHESTER AIRPORT
From the opening of the Channel Tunnel, to hosting a stage of the Tour de France and the launch of Bluewater, the 1990s was a busy decade for Kent.
But just how much have our towns changed since Gazza’s World Cup tears at Italia ‘90? We’ve dug into the photo archives to see how Britain’s best county looked from the skies before the turn of the millennium.
Whether it’s new names added to the map, or the sprawling expansion of our biggest towns, developments in Kent have seen the population increase by at least 300,000 in the past three decades.
The 90s saw Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rain
AYLESFORD NEWSPRINT
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