on the Chatham Reach of the River Medway, directly opposite St Mary's Creek. London Stones The London Stones are in Lower Upnor on the shoreline. They mark the limit of the charter rights of London fishermen. The older stone has the date 1204 carved on it as part of an eighteenth-century inscription. Industry Like other parts of Frindsbury, chalk has been extracted, high quality moulding sand has been taken from a pit near the Church, and William Burgess Little built 25 five barges at his yard between 1843 and 1871. The first was the Sarah Little and the last called W.B.Little Finish. James Little built three barges here in 1891, 1893, and 1895. A potter's kiln can be seen on an 1830 watercolour by Susan Twopeny, now in Rochester Guildhall Museum. The church The ecclesiastical parish of Upnor split from Frindsbury in 1884 and was reabsorbed in 1955. The parish church of St Philip and St James (1884) was designed by Ewan Christian. It is virtually unaltered. Francis Drake's father was ordained deacon and made vicar of the Church upon the River Medway. The military Upnor Castle Upnor Castle was built as an artillery fort between 1559 and 1567 in order to protect Chatham Dockyard and the associated naval anchorage. It was called into action in June 1667 when the Dutch Navy conducted a raid on the ships moored in the river; the castle proved ineffective in repelling the attack and it was decommissioned soon afterwards. Though the castle was only operational as a fort for about 100 years, it was retained as a gunpowder magazine and ammunition store until the end of the First World War; continuing in military use through World War II, it was opened to the public as a museum in 1945. Lower Upnor ordnance depot Upnor Castle served as a gunpowder magazine for the Board of Ordnance from 1668, providing powder for the defences of Chatham Dockyard and for the fleet based in the Nore. In 1810 a new magazine with space for 10,000 barrels of gunpowder was built downriver from the castle (which had long needed to expand its capacity) along with a 'shifting house' for inspecting powder that had arrived by sea (though demolished, its surrounding earth traverse is still in evidence, midway between the magazine and the castle). In 1856 a second magazine was constructed alongside the first, to the same design