This town forgot to be a city 

I've been struggling with this script for months. I even hired a researcher. Trying to distill this was really difficult, as ever there were some technicalities I had to gloss over, but I think this is as close as I can reasonably get!

I live in the town next to Rochester! I will stand where Tom stood and be, like, "wow, this is where Tom stood!"

Tom Scott: "I was going to explain the history of what makes a city a city in the UK, but honestly, it was a bit dull." Map Men: "Challenge accepted!"

Greater London (ie. the area we usually refer to when talking about London) also isn’t a city. The City of London (ie. the financial district) and the City of Westminster (both of which are boroughs of Greater London) are cities, but the metropolis we usually think of as London isn’t. Also, I did some small amount of research into this as part of my PhD and I think I’m right in saying that having a cathedral or university has never been an automatic qualifier for becoming a city, it’s just that (in a precedent I think set by Henry V) places with cathedrals tended to be awarded city status. So it was a convention rather than a hard rule.

A kind of opposite story: Gibraltar recently applied to be a city to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. They refused to put it on the applications list because after doing research they discovered... It had already been granted City status, and had had it for some 180 years!

It's funny, because I've heard of Rochester, but never heard of Medway. Seems absolutely like that whole merging into bigger areas was messed up. In Sweden, the concept of "city" was removed in 1971. Everything became just municipalities. This annoyed Stockholm, so in 1983, Stockholm municipality simply renamed itself "Stockholm Stad" (Stockholm City). That pissed Malmö and Göteborg off, and they also promptly renamed themselves to be cities. Today 14 municipalities n Sweden claim to be cities.

Thanks to you and Jay Foreman, I now have a strange interest in the regional policy of a country I have never been to.

If I were the British monarch, I would decide to abuse my theoretical power by arbitrarily making places into cities. Not only would this be hilarious, it would let the UK deal with the whole "what if the monarch decides to actually use those powers that they haven't used in ages and we kinda pretend they don't have anymore" issue on a fairly small scale. But I'd mainly do it because it would be hilarious.

*Interesting fact* There's a sunken WW1 German submarine stuck in the mud in the Medway River (UB122) and a Soviet cold war submarine in Rochester (Foxtrot B49 U475)

GPT-3 almost exactly one year ago: "The Cliff that refuses to be a Cliff". Tom Scott now: "The City that forgot to be a City".

Gotta come back after Jay's video!

As an American, it’s always so weird to me to see European countries just casually having castles

I live in Rochester, if you ask any of the locals nobody will be that bothered that this place is no longer a city, but its cool to know that Tom Scott himself made a video about my hometown, i knew from the title alone that the video was going to be about Rochester given this place's history.

As soon as you mentioned the minutes, this sprung to mind… Sir Humphrey: “It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t, so it wasn’t.“

This reminds me of my Town of Gilbert, Arizona. Gilbert has grown from around 5,000 people to around 270,000 people over the last 30 years but deliberately decided to stay incorporated as a town and not a city in order to sound more associated with small town, family community, and stay tied to its farming roots. As far as I know it's the largest town in the US and I'd be curious to know of other large towns like Rochester and Gilbert around the world.

The city I grew up in, Layton, Utah, USA, was the largest and most commercially viable city the the county for as long as I can remember. Kaysville, the next city south, was seen as a sleepy bedroom community with a few local stores and little else other than some farmland. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Layton, now the largest city in the county, had sued Kaysville in court for independence.

It's cool to see my home town though on a Tom Scott video, like these places I go past everyday, and then seeing it on a channel that gets millions of views, exposing it to them all.

As an American without castles everywhere, apologizing for _only_ having a castle in the background of your shot hurts me.

I lived in Rochester, and I have family there too. Literally only minutes away from the very castle and high street (well, if you can call Historic Rochester's modest shops a high street) you showed in the video. Know the area so well, it was like being back there. I knew part of the story of why it wasn't a city, but it was good to get more details on it. I never understood why they didn't just reapply for city status later, and now it all makes sense.

I always love these weird bits of legislation. We've got a few fun ones in Canada too-greenwood in BC is a city despite only having 600 people, because in BC you need 5000 to legally be a city, and it never loses that distinction even if the population drops (as greenwoods did decades ago once the mines closed). Flin Flon is split between the borders of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and so while it has a pop. of about 5000, Saskatchewan only has full jurisdiction over about 200 of them. Lastly, because quebec is a nightmare, and just kind of classifies whatever however it wants, we get the city of L'Île-Dorval, which has FIVE people living in it.

As an example of how arbitrary the list is, I come from Bolton which is larger than all but ~17 cities, there's 69 in total ;) in the UK but it is still a town, said to be the largest town in europe by area (by population is different). It used to be even bigger 100 years ago as well, but was never made one. However St David's with a population of 1,600 is a city.

This video has everything I love about british culture! Needless legal pedantry, ancient history, the queen, and talking about the weather!

Still appreciating the subtitles, thank you, Tom! I would totally love to hear the scrapped intro about historical definitions of a city as its own bonus video! Love that kind of trivia and there's no one I trust more to provide only the truth on such a rumour-riddled topic! Your impression of the queen was amusing if not convincing! I'd love an excuse to hear you use it a lot more! And finally, I'm always glad when I watch right up until the end of the video when the playback bar runs out. It's such a treat to watch you break character and get to hear your little asides. They feel so candid and it's like a look at the secret real Tom!

Fascinating video. There are Rochesters scattered all over the United States (I've lived in one), and I've always wondered what sort of amazing city back in the UK they were named after. Turns out it's maybe not even technically a town anymore?

Always hate when you accidently lose your 800 year old status symbol

"There's a storm coming tomorrow - it would've been worse!" Indeed. Several of my friends who live in the same part of England have been losing power repeatedly during the last few days and had to cut up trees that fell into their driveways. I think that counts as worse 😂

I lived in Rochester in a flat opposite the cathedral until quite recently. Great place. There was a consultation on whether to establish a town council for Rochester approximately 2 years ago. As I recall, and despite strong support from Labour councillors and residents, Medway Council declined to proceed.

I grew up in Medway and there was always the kind of amusing story that we would have been a city, but the council didn’t do the paperwork. Never realised it was actually a true story!!!

Bit nostalgic seeing Tom sitting on what is sort of a park bench.

My favourite bit came a few years later where Medway started calling themselves "City of Medway" on signage and the like, but because they weren't on the list, they got told off by Advertising Standards.

Anyone else get this in their recommendations after Jay's video?

4:47 - The Label of "City" being desirable is interesting. In Ontario, Canada we actually have the opposite, Suburban areas that legally should be "City" or the less interesting "Regional Municipality" that have special exceptions from the naming rules to call themselves "County" or "District Municipality" to sound more rural even when they legally aren't that. For Ontarians reading this, the places who got exceptions from the naming rules; - Oxford "County" is a Regional Municipality - The "District Municipality" of Muskoka is a Regional Municipality - Prince Edward "County" is a Single Tier Municipality - Haldimand "County" is a Single Tier Municipality - Norfolk "County" is a Single Tier Municipality - The "County" of Brant is a Single Tier Municipality

"A city is a city if its on the government list of cities" - THANK YOU! I've been trying to tell people this for years when the "What is a city in the UK?" debate comes up. Its amazing how many people still think its about cathedrals...

I live IN Rochester! So sad I missed you! I go to the castle grounds every other day for a walk! Interesting point about the castle… one if it’s 4 towers is round not square because it was mined under and destroyed during a siege! They rebuilt it round because castle design had improved by that point and engineers of the time had realised that round towers resist bombardment better! What a privilege to have a video filmed in my home town! Thanks Tom!

Don't be daft, that opening background with the walls and the bench is hella picturesque! I hope you're well, Tom, and I wish you all the best, been a long-time fan of your videos!

I was born in Rochester! NY, that is. Sad to hear how it’s presumable namesake has been perhaps lost to the passage of time 😔

Roughly twenty years ago in geography class, I learned that our city was only lacking a higher education / university campus in order to be classified as a "grand city" (somewhere between a regular city and a regional capitol), which would have granted us a much bigger budget, etc. Since a few years, we actually _do_ have a campus that is part of the regional university, which would be enough to qualify... if only that was still how municipalities and budgets were handled these days... :P

I loved this one. Reminds me of Census Towns in India. India has two different criteria for calling a place 'urban' - you can either be on a government list (a 'statutory' urban area i.e. urban area 'by statute') or you can be classified as a town during the census once every ten years (which has a very specific set of criteria to be fulfilled, - population, major industries and so on). The trouble is that there are a whole bunch of places all over the country which used to be villages but because of population growth, occupational change and increased density, have turned into urban areas as per the census. However, the government hasn't yet put them on the list. Hence "census towns" - towns as per the census, but not as per government statute. Bit of an issue because India has separate governance structures for rural and urban areas. So you have dozens of census towns, looking and feeling like urban areas in every way, but they don't have municipal corporations because they haven't yet been recognised by statute. Even more confusing is that many census towns don't want a statute. Being classified as rural allows them to access rural development schemes and programmes which are much more generous than the urban ones, so there are times when census towns have actually resisted the statute.

I remember exactly what happened, I was at the meeting! It was down to advice from the Chief Executive at the time. We were advised that it was not required and there was a concern that Gillingham Borough would also do this because they did not like the Unitary Council

I am from Medway (born in Chatham) and even I never knew Rochester was no longer a City! My Dad used to regularly (and very happily) say to me that Rochester was one if Britain's smallest cities BECAUSE it had a Cathedral. Being little at the time I was enthralled to know I was living next to a city! I just find it quite a shame that two once very important towns (Chatham and Rochester) are now nothing more than a word on a map, or that place "yonder hill"... How the mighty have fallen!

Here in Pennsylvania, we have a hilariously complicated system of classifying any and all settlements of any size. There are nine classes of county, two classes of townships, one and only one town, 956 boroughs, and 56 cities divided into four classes of which three only have one city in them.

Born in Chatham here. And my Dad was Leader of Chelmsford Council when it became a city in 2012. The change was, as Tom says, enormous. Chelmsford has received so much investment simply by being a City...a shame about Rochester...going there in the summer.

If you look carefully around the castle area you’ll still see old plaques referring to the “City of Rochester Upon Medway”. My home town and I love it!

In Canada (Ontario Specifically) once a town reaches 7500 residents, it can apply to the provincial government to be designated a city. There's no other criteria. Oakville has over 190k residents, but they prefer to be called a town so never bothered getting it changed.

That title gives me major "The cliff that refused to be a cliff" vibes.

Just an American from NYC passing through and finding all of this fascinating - hope everyone has a great day

Some times the background is nicest when it’s the most simple, love the video Tom, keep it up!

Thanks so much for educating me on the subject!

My face when I saw this in my Subs list... sitting just along the river, having sat on that *exact* bench before. Some of my fellow Rochester residents are mighty bitter about the loss of City status. Others, well, they're just happy we don't live in *other Medway town, delete as applicable*. Hope you got to have a good look around Tom!

I lived in rochester until 2011, I can totally believe the borough council forgot the paperwork. For a long time they called themselves "Rochester, City of Europe." To get that status, they took Rochester and put "City of Europe" after it. It got shot down rather hard when it got discovered.

Thank you, Tom. Educational and entertaining as always!

i used to live in rochester and recognize all of these places you've shown immediately including places where friends, family and myself have worked. this is just one of the many stories rochester (and the rest of medway) has to tell, you may have noticed while you were around the castle that one of the turrets is round while the others are square, there is a story for that and there are historic naval sites all over the place too. tom, there are lots more stories to tell, please tell them.

The impression of the Queen was so accurate (skip to 1:18 to see an Oscar worthy performance)

Having lived here in Medway for the vast majority of my life, this story gives me equal parts pride and embarrassment. Interestingly, considering Strood was one of the reasons for the original rejigging, it is generally considered part of Rochester now (and Rainham a part of Gillingham). It is Gillingham, Chatham and Rochester which are generally considered to be THE Medway Towns.

This was amazing! truly brilliant video!

So cool to see you doing stuff in my hometown!

The locality formerly known as the City of Rochester

1:17 it's official. The one who decides what a city is is Mickey Mouse.

Thanks for the doing the research on this topic. Interesting.

Wow! I live close to Rochester and often go through these areas you filmed. Wish I could have seen you there. Great video as always!

Living in New England and more specifically Massachusetts, there is a town right next to me named Medway. Lovely little place. The presumed namesake across the pond looks lovely too. A bit windier, but lovely

Hey I live in Medway it's awesome that this place gets recognition from someone like you Tom!

"It is a very windy day in Rochester..." That doesn't narrow things down much. I know of three Rochesters and they are all known for being windy.

I have always loved your videos and i will probably will keep loving it. Such boring topics are so interesting when you talk about them!

An alternative to charter trustees would have been to erect a civil parish - there are eight such civil parishes with city status. Curiously despite being a city Rochester didn't have a mayor. Instead its civic leader was the Admiral of the River Medway, or as per the charter of Henry VI in 1446 “Admiral of the Waters of the Medway from Sherenesse to Hawkewode.”

Then you've got something like Manchester, which is technically two cities (either side of a river, like Budapest or Ankh-Morpork) and several towns mashed together into a conurbation that often gets called Manchester as a whole.

it feels so weird saying queen now shes gone.

used to live near Medway and Rochester was a HUGE part of my childhood, never knew about this!

"Back in 2002" Oh fairly recen... "20 years ago" ....*existential crisis intensifies*

There's a similar bit of lore going on in the north of Portugal, where there's an area that's deemed big enough to be called a City, but they refused the moniker and still call it a Town. Most people nearby attribute it to the risk of it losing its cherished "oldest town in the country" title without becoming the oldest city in the process, but as they say, only God knows.

Wasn't expecting to open RU-vid to see Tom has made a video on the town right next to where I live!

very close to home this one!!! cheers tom for a great video

Tom Scott visiting must be enough to make it a city! Rochester-upon-the-Stone-where-Tom-sat-in-the-wind

I'm from Rochester, and I've grown up here for all my life! Thanks for covering this interesting part of my history :)

I so enjoy your stories explaining england

The audio is awesome with so much wind !

In Germany we have a small town called "Stadt Blankenberg" ("City of Blankenberg"). It has 606 inhabitants now, but was a city until 1805, with all the stuff around it belonging to it

That background was actually really nice. You're in front of a castle wall, which reminds your viewers that this is a place with a lot of history. And the flowers tell us this is not an abandoned place, people still live there and want it to look nice because they still feel pride about it all. Which fits very well, thematically, with the story being told.

Brilliant video as always, very sorry that you had to visit Medway.

The BIG thing that wasn't mentioned here which I think is actually the real kicker for Rochester (or Rochester-upon-Medway, or Medway) is exactly WHY Rochester had city status originally. City status for most cities was/is conferred by a Letters Patent nominally from the Monarch, and theoretically Medway may at some point acquire such a letters patent. Rochester however was one of 20 exceptions, 20 cities who didn't have a Letters Patent declaring them cities, but rather they existed as cities by being cities since "Time Immemorial", since before such good recordkeeping and procedures existed, since virtually, forever. One other thing: There was a tendency for settlements that contain a diocese cathedral to be/become a city, it wasn't a requirement on paper, but was (for at least two times in history at least) tradition in England & Wales. These even holds true from the 20 ancient cities, they aligned to 19 of the 22 ancient dioceses (the other 3 being in Wales). So I think to simply say the belief that "cathedral = city historically" is a myth is itself misleading, because there is a basis for that.

As someone who lives in the Midlands and has an obsession with history I can safely say I have never heard of Medway and it is still Rochester in my mind.

Being from Rochester New York it’s so interesting hearing how Rochester is pronounced differently in England

There are cities, and there are historic cities, my home town Coventry might not have a castle anymore, but I think it fits the definition of City by virtue of having had not one, but three Cathedrals, two Universities, an entire County in it's own right at one time, not to mention a parliament. I would have thought by historical definition Rochester should be a city, that is one heckl of a castle.

As a history graduate from Kent, this makes me sad, 800 years of status now gone

...whelp, and here I thought losing your status because you forgot to tick a box would be unique to German bureaucracy.

"The purpose of minutes is not to record events, it is to protect people. Minutes are there to reflect what people thought they should have said, with the benefit of hindsight." - One Sir Humphrey

You are one of the last youtubers who makes videos that are not unnecessarily long. Congrats! Would love to see more videos about old british technology.

I absolutely love the way you get to the point of the story

Tom: *What makes a city a city... Its a bit dull!* Jay Foreman: _disgruntled whining_

As soon as you said Rochester, I got excited. We have a few Rochester's in the United States, but our popular, and also similarly windy one is in New York.

Scotland actually got a new City last year, Dunfermline… bringing the grand total to 8 whole cities in Scotland…

Northampton (on your list) supposedly scuppered its chances by siding with Cromwell and later hatching the gunpowder plot, but it remains a really big town (cathedral, university, county and all) Lesson dont P off the Queen

Hey, I'm from Rochester! I always was told that Rochester lost its City status because of an almagamation of the Medway Towns and that because it was no longer a singular "town/city" it couldn't be considered as such. Cool to know it was an administration error!

I was literally researching what a city is yesterday, I think there's two lists, the list of cities from the government which is decided by decision of the queen/gov, the other is the list used by the house of commons, and that's sorted by population. Search terms :"City & Town Classification of Constituencies & Local Authorities House of Commons"

I’m devastated I wasn’t in Rochester when Tom was there, I live like 20 minutes away

Wym "Sorry that the background isn't quite as picturesque as it usually is." 0:10, that is a really nice background and probably one of my favs on your channel ngl, like I'm not kidding I genuinely love it!

The British really like their governance technicalities with centuries of history that makes everything complicated, don't they. I really don't want to be a British bureaucrat with this huge collection of exemptions. Tom could probably sustain his channel with just these.

I remember when this happened. I used to work for them when it happened but luckily wasn’t part of this fiasco. There was a blame game when this happened back then and it comes up each time they throw money at trying to apply for City status.

Greetings from Rochester, New York, USA; the once flour city, now flower city.

Welcome to Rochester! Good to have you down this way 😁 great video! 😁