Faversham

Sister cities

• Hazebrouck

History

Faversham was established as a settlement before the Roman conquest of Britain. The Romans established several towns in Kent including Faversham, with traffic through the Saxon Shore ports of Reculver, Richborough, Dover and Lympne converging on Canterbury before heading up Watling Street to London. The town was less than from Canterbury, and consequently Faversham had become established on this road network by 50 AD following the initial conquest by Claudius in 43 AD. Numerous remains of Roman buildings have been discovered in and around Faversham, including under St Mary of Charity Church where coins and urns were discovered during reconstruction of the western tower in 1794. In 2013, the remains of a 2,000-year-old Roman theatre, able to accommodate some 12,000 people, were discovered at a hillside near the town. The cockpit-style outdoor auditorium, the first of its kind found in Britain, was a style the Romans used elsewhere in their empire on the Continent. There is archaeological evidence to suggest that Faversham was a summer capital for the kings of Kent. The King's Field Treasure indicates that a significant burial site was located in the south-west of the town during the late 6th and early 7th centuries. The cemetery was located roughly between Stone Street to the north, London Road to the south, the Mall to the east and St Ann's Road and Upper St Ann's Road to the west. The site was uncovered during the construction of the Chatham–Dover railway line in 1858. Artefacts from King's Field are now dispersed among several collections, notably the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford alongside other British collections. 2018–2019 excavations beneath the Market Inn unearthed a probable…

Geography

Faversham is roughly equidistant between Sittingbourne and Canterbury. It lies south east of London, east of Maidstone, and north from Ashford. Nearby villages include Oare across Oare Creek to the north, Luddenham, Mockbeggar and Ospringe. Geographically, Faversham sits at a boundary between marshland to the north and a mixture of brick earth, gravel and chalk to the south which leads into the North Downs. Faversham Creek connects the town to the Swale that separates mainland Kent from the Isle of Sheppey. The surrounding area is part of the South Swale Nature Reserve, popular with wildfowl and wading birds. The South Swale Nature Reserve is managed by the Environment Agency and Natural England The coastline around Faversham is a by-product of the changes to sea level around Britain since the end of the last ice age. During Roman Britain and into the first millennium, the Faversham coast was a large estuary with Oare and Graveney being peninsulas. Land reclamation during the Middle Ages, which closed the River Wantsum and connected the Isle of Thanet to mainland Kent, resulted in less tidal waters reaching Faversham. This led to the gradual silting up of estuaries; Faversham Creek and its tributaries have been reduced from to . To stop the creek silting up completely and making navigation impossible, a number of sluices have been installed since the 16th century. Faversham formerly held the weather record for the highest ever UK temperature (in 2003) at . This was the first time the recorded temperature had ever exceeded reliably in the UK. This record had stood for nearly 16 years, but was beaten by 0.2 °C (0.4 °F) with a temperature of recorded in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden on 25 July 2019. Faversham still holds the record for the…