Faversham is a town in Kent, England, in the district of Swale, roughly halfway between Sittingbourne and Canterbury. The parish of Faversham (Feversham) includes an ancient sea port and market town, some 48 miles east of London, off the London to Dover A2 road, 18 miles east north-east of Maidstone and 9 miles west of Canterbury.

1 History and features
2 Faversham munitions works
3 The Great Explosion at Faversham
4 Hottest temperature
5 Sources
6 Further reading
7 External links

[edit] History and features

Established as a settlement before the Roman conquest, Faversham was held in royal demesne in 811, and is further cited in a charter granted by Kenulf, the King of Mercia. Faversham was recorded in the Domesday Book as Favreshant. The town has regularly throughout its history obtained curious royal privileges and charters.

In 1147 an abbey was established in Faversham by King Stephen, who with his consort Matilda of Boulogne, and his son, Eustace, the Earl of Boulogne was buried there, thus acquiring a status as one of only a few churches outside London where an English king was interred.

Sir Thomas Culpeper was granted Faversham Abbey by Henry VIII of England during the Dissolution of the Monasteries about 1536. The abbey was demolished directly after the dissolution and much of its masonry taken to Calais to reinforce that town's defences against French interests. In 1539, the ground upon which the abbey had stood, along with nearby land passed to Sir Thomas Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School has been built on the abbey site.

The town of Faversham is known in Kent as a harbour and market community but is also at the centre of the county's brewing industry — home to Shepherd Neame, a brewery, acquired from the last heir of the Shepherd family by Percy Beale Neame in the 1840s. Abbey Street and the centre of the town include a remarkable collection of original medieval houses. Perhaps as remarkable is that much of it was intended for demolition as recently as the 1960s, until the value of the buildings, now listed, was recognised and local people began a determined fight to restore and preserve the area. The parish church (of St Mary of Charity), with its unusual flying spire, is another gem, having a most unexpected interior, whose acoustics make it an exceptional venue for musical performances. It was restored and transformed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, known for his St Pancras Station, the Foreign Office and many college and cathedral buildings, in 1874. (His son, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, designed the classic 1930s phone boxes and the Faversham Society has one in its collection at the Fleur de Lis heritage centre).

The attractive and historic central area, and especially the part-pedestrian parts of the old but vibrant town between the station and the creek, attracts visitors, who can learn about the town's history and features at the Fleur-de-Lis centre, which provides tourist information and houses a museum. There is still a regular market several days each week in the market square where the Guildhall stands. In the same part of the town there is an early and largely unchanged but functioning cinema and the modern Arden Theatre, named after Arden of Feversham, a domestic drama set in the town's Abbey Street. All the nearby streets feature interesting old pubs, some exceptional Alms houses, shops and a growing collection of art galleries and restaurants, including one that specialises in local fare, such as Kentish wines and Luddenham beef and pork. The Shepherd Neame brewery contributes inviting aromas on weekdays and also offers tours for visitors. The town formerly also housed Fremlins and Whitbread breweries. One of these has recently been converted into a supermarket but retains many of its 19th-century features.

The pull of a farmer's market and an exceptional farm shop in nearby Macknade — next to a Michelin-starred restaurant on the outskirts of Faversham on the A2 — also contributes to this controversy). There are hopes that imaginative uses may be found for the rest of the interesting town-centre former brewery buildings; most of Shepherd Neame's brewing now takes place in modern buildings closer to the creek but their head office is an attraction in itself. Old sail-powered Thames barges are repaired, rebuilt and moored along the picturesque old creekside and the works of local artists is revealed in open houses linked to the Canterbury Festival each autumn.

The area is now sought after by retired people and by commuters to London. The abundance of characterful and period homes in Faversham and neighbouring villages (see Swale) combine with a number of recent developments in the town to provide a lively housing market; for commuters, the good motorway links and the regular train services to Victoria make it a manageable distance to travel. This will be made quicker from 2007, when the proposed fast link connects via the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to Ebbsfleet, and London's Stratford and St Pancras stations.

The attractions of a lively medieval town near the fascinating Oare marshes and coast and to the inviting North Downs countryside and its villages combine with the proximity to Canterbury, the Bluewater shopping centre and employment opportunities in London and locally. The area's reputation has not been enhanced, however, by the fact that, for a less-skilled minority, local employment has proved more elusive, especially since the local fruit and hop-picking and packing industries and other agricultural activities have needed much less labour. Recent media references to "Chaversham", following a spate of reports of criminal activities and a drug culture (hardly unique to the area), have not been welcomed locally where it is felt that such issues need to be seen in the context of the town's many rather more noticeable charms.

The years during the First World War saw an uncertain time for the breweries. In the first instance, there was the scarcity of labour from 1915 which soon became evident, as a number of employees turned to offers of higher wages elsewhere, including the local ammunitions works. The explosion at the gunpowder works (see below) and subsequent changes in the local economy have, however, meant that Shepherd Neame is now one of the area's more promising industries despite a decline in consumption of traditional bitter beer. It now also makes Indian and other beers under licence and, in common with many other "gastro-pubs", its largely-Kentish pub franchise is as noted for its food as its owner's beers, following trends in food consumption and drink-driving laws. It is both one of the most profitable breweries in Britain and also claims to be its oldest.

By contrast, the ammunition industry in the area is now extinct and the part of the Oare marshes where the 1916 gunpowder explosion (see below) took place is now even more isolated and has been an important reserve for birds, attracting binocular-toting enthusiasts to view the many species of migrants. There is an interesting information centre (as well as other bird hides) near the site of the former Harty ferry over the Swale to the Isle of Sheppey.

Faversham has a rigorous approach to exploring its past – it has a highly active archaeological society and a series of community archaeology projects are run every year. Most recently the town’s medieval tannery was located in back gardens of quite normal houses, and evidence from the Saxon period was uncovered during the Hunt the Saxons project in 2005.

[edit] Faversham munitions works

Like the brewery, munitions production was not new to Faversham. It was some time about 1753 that the first of Faversham’s gunpowder factories was established, leading over subsequent years to a growth in development, that by 1786 saw in total three such factories in and around Faversham.

The first real problem arose shortly after the introduction of a new material, with the discovery in Germany in 1846 of guncotton, the first high explosive that was distinct from the more usual forms of propellant such as gunpowder, in terms of its superior destructive effect. Under agreement with the innovator, a professor of chemistry at Basle, Dr Christian Schonbein, the first guncotton plant in the world opened at the Faversham Marsh Works later that year.

On 14 July 1847 an explosion killed 18 workers and injured others. The detonation was heard as far away as Maidstone and only 10 of the dead could be identified. With only one accident of a less serious nature in 1899, the Cotton Powder Plant continued to prosper and by 1915 had expanded to cover a 500-acre (2 km²) site including in its range of products along with guncotton, cordite, gelignite, nitroglycerine, detonators, dynamite and distress rockets.

The plant offered well-paid work to men as far afield as Herne Bay and Margate and Faversham had become for a short period one of the centres of the nations munitions industry.

To lessen the expense of production for the war effort a cheap but highly volatile chemical amatol was introduced into the process of bomb and shell manufacture at the Explosives Loading Company (ELC) site that had opened in 1912 next to the guncotton plant.

[edit] The Great Explosion at Faversham

At 14:20 on Sunday 2 April 1916, a huge explosion ripped through the gunpowder mill at Uplees, near Faversham, when 200 tons of TNT ignited. 105 people died in the explosion, and many were buried in a mass grave at Faversham Cemetery.

The weather might have contributed to the origins of the fire that followed on the morning of Sunday 2 April 1916. The previous month had been wet but had ended with a short dry spell so that by that Sunday the weather was "glorious" ... but provided perfect conditions for heat-generated combustion.

The munitions factory was in a remote spot in the middle of the open marshes of North Kent, next to the Thames coastline, which explains why the great explosion at about noon on 2 April was heard across the Thames estuary as far away as Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Southend-on-Sea, where domestic windows were blown out and two large plate-glass shop windows shattered.

The East Kent Gazette of Sittingbourne reported the explosion on 29 April. Although recognising the need for some censorship, it referred to the reply given in Parliament to the question as "mystifying and ambiguous" and called for the fullest precautions to be implemented to "prevent another calamity of the kind" occurring again.

Although not the first such disaster of this kind to have happened at Faversham’s historic munitions works, the April 1916 blast is recorded as "the worst ever in the history of the UK explosives industry", and yet the full picture is still somewhat confused. The reason for the fire is uncertain. And considering the quantity of explosive chemical stored at the works — with one report indicating that a further 3,000 tons remained in nearby sheds unaffected — it is remarkable, and a tribute to those who struggled against the fire that so much of the nation's munitions were prevented from contributing further to the catastrophe.

The Secretary of State for War, Earl Kitchener, had in 1914 written to the management of the CPC, and it is presumed the ELC, instructing the workforce on "the importance of the government work upon which they (were) engaged". "I should like all engaged by your company to know that it is fully recognised that they, in carrying out the great work of supplying munitions of war, are doing their duty for their King and Country, equally with those who have joined the Army for active service in the field," Kitchener said.

[edit] Hottest temperature

Faversham holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK. 38.5C (101.3F) was recorded at the Brogdale Horticultural Trust on 10 August 2003.

[edit] Sources

The Great Explosion at Faversham by Arthur Percival: also reprinted in Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. C. (1985).
Faversham Times
East Kent Gazette

[edit] Further reading

Paul Wilkinson - The Historical Development of the Port of Faversham 1580-1780: A comprehensive historical and archaeological investigation into the maritime organization of the port (2006) ISBN 1-84171-946-3