Faversham: Beer, Gunpowder and Getting There from Canterbury

Faversham is a market town in Kent, standing on a creek that runs out to the Swale, the strip of sea separating mainland Kent from the Isle of Sheppey. It had 19,316 residents at the 2011 census: a working town with its own market, station and high street.

Two industries built it, and both are still legible on the ground. Shepherd Neame, founded in 1698 though brewing here pre-dates it, remains family-owned, claims to be the oldest brewery in Britain and produces around 230,000 barrels a year; its visitor centre and shop are on Court Street in the middle of town. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries it was also the centre of the English explosives industry, six factories at its height, and the remains of one are now wooded ruins in a country park at Oare.

Wikipedia puts the town 10 miles (16 km) from Canterbury; the straight-line distance is 13.6 km. It lies close to the A2, the road the Romans paved and the Anglo-Saxons called Watling Street, and was on that network by about 50 AD.

Abbey Street, the market and the old centre

Faversham Market, the oldest street market in Kent, has been held here for over 900 years and still runs several days a week in the square where the Guildhall stands, with monthly markets in Preston Street and Court Street. A visitor in October 2021 wrote, “Faversham is a pretty place with a good choice of cafes and bars. There are a number of independent shops which out number the chain stores.”

Abbey Street runs from the centre down towards the water. Laid out around 1201 as an approach to Faversham Abbey, it still carries its timber-framed buildings and has been described as “the finest medieval street in southeast England”. Arden’s House on the street was the scene of the murder of Thomas Arden in 1551, the subject of the play Arden of Feversham, written around 1590 and attributed variously to Shakespeare or to Canterbury-born Christopher Marlowe; the town’s Arden Theatre takes its name from it and stages work in the Canterbury Festival each autumn.

The abbey itself is gone, dissolved and demolished in 1538. The indoor stop is the Fleur de Lis Heritage Centre on Preston Street, run by the Faversham Society, which holds the town museum and the visitor information centre and rates 4.8 from 80 Google reviews.

Standard Quay and the creek

Faversham Creek connects the town to the Swale, and old sail-powered Thames barges are still repaired, rebuilt and moored along the creekside. Standard Quay, at the far end of Abbey Street, is where most visitors meet it: a marina rated 4.5 from 768 Google reviews, with antique dealers in the old warehouses, a fish shop, cafés and a bar. A visitor in June 2023 gave the directions plainly: “Just walk down to the end of Abbey Street (the medieval cobbled road lined with historic buildings)”.

It is small, and it depends on the season. A visitor in February 2026 was unimpressed: “Less going on than I expected from publicity. Lots closed and not many boats- presumably the wrong season.” The creek has been silting for centuries — medieval land reclamation cut its tidal waters from 1,378 acres to 43 — yet over 1,200 ships were built and launched here between 1916 and 1969.

Gunpowder at Oare, and the explosion of 1916

A gunpowder plant was working at Faversham by about 1573, on a stream that could be dammed at intervals to drive watermills. That original plant, the Home Works, stretched about a mile along the waterfront by the 19th century; a second works went up at Oare, north-west of the town, in the late 17th century, the Marsh Works followed in 1786, and later factories beside the Swale made TNT and cordite.

The industry ended in disaster. On Sunday 2 April 1916 sparks from a chimney ignited a store of around 150 tonnes of high explosives at Uplees, killing over 100 people; on any other day of the week the toll would have been far worse. Seventy-three of the dead lie in Faversham Cemetery under the Grade II* listed Munitions Explosion Memorial. The last factories closed in 1934.

Oare Gunpowder Works is now a country park and nature reserve, rated 4.6 from 918 Google reviews, with process houses and mill leats conserved under signboards and waymarked trails. It is not big: a visitor in January 2019 called it “One of the smallest parks in the area but also one of the most interesting.” Expect woodland, boardwalks and ponds rather than facilities: the visitor centre is not always open, reviewers report locked toilets, and the small car park fills. A visitor in October 2023 warned, “Get your wellies as well as some sections will be fairly muddy.”

The rec and the pools

Two more places, both for families. Faversham Recreation Ground, left to the town in 1860 by a solicitor, Henry Wreight, rates 4.4 from 969 Google reviews for its two age-split playgrounds, skate area, tennis courts and café, with one recurring complaint — a visitor in July 2026 wrote, “Loses a star only because the toilets are quite shockingly bad”. Faversham Pools, 4.2 from 761 Google reviews, has a 33-metre outdoor pool with three diving boards, an indoor pool and a rapids channel; opinion divides between praise for the outdoor swimming and complaints about crowding. A visitor in August 2024 wrote, “You could barely move in the big main pool, let alone swim”.

Getting there from Canterbury

The train is the straightforward way. Southeastern services run from Faversham to Dover Priory via Canterbury East, putting the town on a direct line from the Canterbury station 0.7 km from the city centre. The centre and the pools are walkable from the platform — a visitor in June 2026 wrote that “The pool was easy to walk from the railway station”.

By bus, Wikipedia records that Stagecoach in East Kent operates routes 3, 3X, 3A and 3B to Canterbury. Swale Borough Council has itself raised concern about the town’s bus and cycle provision compared with its road and rail links, and about the lack of public transport out to the surrounding rural areas: Oare is a walk or a drive from the station.

By road it is the A2, which still carries traffic between Canterbury and Sittingbourne while London-bound drivers take the M2. National Cycle Route 1 passes through Faversham between Whitstable and Sittingbourne and also serves Canterbury, where it meets the largely traffic-free Crab and Winkle Way to the coast.