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Faversham
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My
favourite part of Faversham — down by the creek. The tower
of the parish Church can be seen behind the warehouses. This view
is now (2005) of nice, neat reproduction warehouse-type houses!
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I was born within the scent of two breweries — Shepherd Neame and Whitbread's (it is no wonder that I became a cheerful drinker at an early age).
Faversham is a small large town on the southern edge of the Thames Estuary, straddling a small and muddy creek up which Thames Barges used to slide and up which a few survivors still reside. It has a splendid church tower, some splendid pubs (though not as atmospheric as when I first lived in Faversham as an adult, some twenty eight years after I was born there), some splendid streets of jettied and half-timbered buildings (one of which, in Abbey Street, I was privileged to rent for a while), some splendid history (Romans, Saxon glass, an long-lost abbey, Arden of Faversham, a gunpowder industry that spurned Nobel and was thus obliterated in the 19th century), some splendid marshes (once the haunt of fever-laden mosquitoes).
Not only
was I born there, but I later dug
there and spent some time as District Editor of the Faversham News.
My father, who began his teaching career in the town, was, a couple of
decades later, headmaster of the Faversham's secondary modern school,
the now-defunct Faversham Boys Secondary School.
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Faversham Creek, looking eastwards, with boats sitting comfortably on the low tide mud. I was told by locals that if someone grounded his boat on the mud it was said that he'd "come off 'is bike". This scene hasn't changed as much as elsewhere on and around the creek. |
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