Our Vision

Faversham Creek Trust is an independent, non-political, not-for-profit community enterprise. Its overall aim is to restore Faversham Creek as a working waterway. In particular, it will:

• Help to regenerate the Creek as a community resource
• Develop a training scheme for shipwrights
• Foster traditional boatbuilding skills, and
• Promote tourism linked to the town’s maritime heritage

In order to achieve these aims the Trust is refurbishing the Purifier building to act as a training centre, a workshop, and a focus for community activities relating to the town’s maritime heritage as a Cinque Port Limb. In partnership with other organisations it is also campaigning for a new swing bridge that will re-open access to the upper basin, and contributing to the local authority planning process.

We have around 400 members, and an active programme of events and activities. We are Charity Number 1146660 and Company Number 7667130.

The Creek Trust was formed at a time when pressure for housing development seemed to threaten any possibility of reviving the economic fortunes of the creek as a working waterway. Houses at the water’s edge command a premium, but throughout the Thames Estuary, dozens of boatyards have closed due to conflicts of this kind. Various people came together to fight for the Creek as a genuine heritage project – whereby the skills of boatbuilders and shipwrights could be passed on to young people, and traditional boats such as sailing barges and the local bawleys would find a haven here, for overwintering and repair. We have had campaigns, raised funds, held exhibitions, meetings, and social events to help local people understand what is at risk. The current battle is to get the authorities to reinstate an opening bridge across the creek – to allow vessels into the Basin (beside the Purifier Building), as is their legal right.