In 2015, the Kent Gardens Trust performed a review of historical information relating to Churchfields in Rochester.

From the report:
"STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Churchfields is an example of Medway’s several open spaces acquired in the late C19 and early C20 through public philanthropy, being donated to the City of Rochester in 1906 by Councillor Charles Willis, later to become an Alderman, Mayor and freeman of the City. As with several others in Medway (The Vines and Rochester Cathedral Precincts) the site has associations with the King’s School as it was previously a meadow owned by the headmaster of the school in the mid C19, Robert Whiston. It has archaeological potential as it is underlain by an extension of the large network of tunnels, constructed during Wold War II by Short Brothers, aviation pioneers and famous for their ‘Sunderland Flying Boat’, to extend their adjacent factory underground to counter the perceived vulnerability of the Medway estuary . Its situation on a hillside above the river offers one of the best panoramic and scenic views in Rochester and has provided recreational space for the local community for the last hundred years.

… In the mid C19 Churchfields was known as Church Mead and was pasture land for cattle...grazing continued on the site into the early part of the C20.

The name of the site seems to have changed twice around ... – first [from Church Mead] to Backfields and then, by 1906, to Church Field.

Councillor Charles Willis donated Churchfields to the City of Rochester in 1906 for use as public recreation ground in memory of his parents. A plaque on the site’s south-east boundary wall (the site’s name is recorded on this as Church Field) commemorates this donation and an elaborate scroll was presented to him in recognition of his gift.

It was also Willis who sold the adjacent Tower Field to the south of Churchfields to the three Short Brothers (aviation pioneers and of ‘Flying Boats’ fame) for their factory after being instrumental in persuading them to move from Sheppey to Rochester in 1913, where they could have larger premises right by the river...During Wold War II Shorts extended their factory underground and constructed a large network of tunnels under both their own factory site and Churchfields. Shorts closed the factory in 1948…There is a commemorative plaque to the Short brothers on the south-west boundary wall." (1)

The site remains in public ownership. (correct as of January 2015) (1)

<1> Kent Gardens Trust, 2015, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Medway: Churchfields, Rochester (Unpublished document). SKE31403.