Upnor

Coordinates: 51°24′37″N 0°31′34″E / 51.4104°N 0.526°E / 51.4104; 0.526

Lower Upnor and Upper Upnor are two small villages in Medway, Kent, England. They are in the parish of Frindsbury Extra on the western bank of the River Medway. Today the two villages are mainly residential and a centre for small craft moored on the river, but Upnor Castle is a preserved monument, part of the river defences from the sixteenth century.

Origins

Upnor meant "at the bank" being "æt þæm ōre" in Old English and "atten ore" in Middle English and "atte Nore" in 1292. However, the meaning changed to "upon the bank" (Middle English: "uppan ore") and by 1374 it was "Upnore".

A skeleton of a Straight-tusked Elephant was excavated in 1911, during the construction of the Royal Engineers' Upnor Hard.

Lower Upnor

Lower Upnor faces Upnor Reach. It was a single row of houses, separated from the river by the roadway and the hard. Located here is the Arethusa training centre, run by the Shaftesbury Homes. In 1849, HMS Arethusa was the name of the training ship moored near the shore. The society had moored a training ship here for over 105 years. The first was the Chichester, but after then all the ships were called Arethusa. The last but one Arethusa was the Peking, one of the R.F Laeisz's Flying P-Liner four-masted barques, built in 1911, and acquired after 1918 as war reparations. She was sold in 1975 to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York. The last Arethusa, a 23 metre two-masted ketch, was sold in 2000 and now sails with the Cirdan Sailing Trust under the name Faramir.