Surviving alongside the Lower Lines and the Great Lines Field of Fire, the Inner Lines survive as an example of the change to civilian recreational use of redudant military installations.
During the whole period when the military ramparts were operational, and arguably up to the present (2014) the Inner Lines maintained a considerable area of open ground. Originally used for mustering and manoeuvring troops, later uses including allotments and recreational areas for military personel.
The C19 recreation ground was laid out around an C18 domestic garden. Virtually all of the designed features of the C18 pleasure grounds, and most of the C19 Garrison Recreation ground, are now gone (2014), buried or degraded. However, due to the position of the Inner Lines, adjacent to the current military housing, the site continues in its original purpose of providing a recreational ground for soldiers and their families.

In 2015, the Kent Gardens Trust conducted a review of the historic information relating to the Inner Lines/Garrison Gardens, Chatham and Gillingham.

Taken from the review:
"STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: The site survives, along with the Lower Lines and the Great Lines Field of Fire, as an example of the change to civilian recreational use of redundant military installations and land in Chatham. The Inner Lines land in particular survives as the site of a C19 recreation ground laid out around an C18 domestic garden (now, 2014, gone), both associated with new thinking about – and experimenting with - the improvement of the lives of the resident military, both officers and ranks, including allocating allotment land for vegetable growing by the troops. Although only remnant shrubberies survive, the pleasure ground design was typical of a mid C18 villa garden while the C19 recreation ground layout of tennis courts, croquet and bandstand, reflected both a military desire for order and the contemporary style of public park design nationally. The garden and park continue to fulfil their recreational role for the present-day adjacent military housing. The site has archaeological potential for the buried remains of the designed landscape and its structures and contains evidential value of pre-military use in the form of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground beneath its surface.

Historical Summary :

The Great Lines fortification, of which the Inner Lines forms part, has been an area of human activity from prehistoric times. It was occupied during the Anglo-Saxon period, from which a cemetery site survives, the Roman period and later became the location of the medieval town of Chatham. Together with surrounding farmland and common grazing, the medieval town was destroyed when displaced by the defence fortifications.

From the C18 onwards, domestic requirements began to exert an influence on the use and layout of land around the fortifications.

… During the whole period when the military ramparts were operational and even up to the present time (2014) the Inner Lines maintained a considerable area of open ground, which was used for mustering and manoeuvring troops. The area was kept largely free of buildings until the garrison church of St Barbara was erected in 1854.

...Recreational use was formalised in 1868 by a grant to the garrison in December by the Secretary of State for War... Intended for officers, it was designed and laid out in the style of a mid C19 public park with ‘a circuitous path, which enclosed a geometry of smaller elliptical and circular paths…the Park would have been turfed, and planted with shrubbery along its perimeter, in great part evergreen, with select trees and shrubs, including conifers, within the central areas’ (‘The historical landscape – Great Lines City Park’ p24).

The work started in January 1869 and was carried out by the Royal Engineers who landscaped the ground and installed roads and carriage drives. A Mr Menzies, Deputy Surveyor of Windsor Park, was engaged to design the project. The Garrison Recreation Ground opened in May 1869; various regimental bands took it in turns to play in the park’s bandstand, in place by the end of the C19. (Kendall p125) Officers and non-commissioned officers and men were segregated into separate areas.

Most of the layout was complete by the end of the 1860s although a bowling green was added in 1870 and croquet lawns in 1873. Tennis courts were also built in the south section of the Inner Lines. The United Services (Officers) Lawn Tennis Club at its height had sixteen grass courts, two hard courts, two croquet lawns and a pavilion...By the 1930s the Inner Lines was largely being used for military recreational activities … A new bandstand had been erected on top of a bank fortification to overlook the courts. Shrubs were planted as a backdrop. Next to it, the C19 pleasure grounds still contained a mixture of deciduous species and conifers...Virtually all of the designed features of the C18 pleasure grounds and most of the C19 Garrison Recreation ground are now (2014) gone, buried or degraded but due to the position of the Inner Lines, adjacent to the current military housing, the site continues in its original purpose of providing a recreational ground for soldiers and their families.

As part of the Great Lines Heritage Park the Inner Lines are currently owned by Medway Council and managed through a comprehensive management and maintenance plan drawn up in 2012.

The Site:
The site is bounded by Sally Port road to north; Maxwell Road forms the western boundary (between the Inner Lines and the dockyard). To the south it abuts Fort Amherst at the Cornwallis Battery...it covers an area of approximately 8 ha. Its setting comprises military and civilian housing to the west, east and north and to the south, the extensive defensive structures of Fort Amherst. The military housing to the north was built between 1952 and the 1970s on land formally part of the Inner Lines’ recreation area.

The Inner Lines today (2014) is roughly divided into two sections, north and south. The northern section, south of Sally Port Gardens Road comprises an area of grass-floored open woodland intersected with a few informal footpaths, known as the Paddock. This is the only surviving part of the former extensive encampment areas within the Inner Lines, which were originally laid out for military recreational use. The southern section, which comprises the former C19 Officers’ Park, contains tennis courts, which survive in form and location from those laid out in the late C19. The path routes also mostly survive from the original 1860s layout although are now tarmac surfaced... Areas surrounding the tennis courts are in use for car parking and are in poor condition." (1)

<1> Kent Gardens Trust, 2015, The Kent Compendium of Historic Parks and Gardens for Medway: The Great Lines The Inner Lines or Garrison Gardens, Chatham and Gillingham (Unpublished document). SKE31413.