As we are only away for one night it didn’t take long to pack, in fact it probably took longer to make our picnic lunch than it did to pack! Anyway by 10:00 we were ready to go so we set off for Belmont House, which is just outside Faversham. The original red brick farmhouse at Belmont dates from 1769 and was built by Edward Wilks who was in charge of the Royal Powder Mills at Faversham. In 1780, Mr Wilks sold the house to Colonel John Montresor who was largely responsible for the creation of the house and estate as it stands today. In 1801 Belmont was purchased by General George Harris, later the 1st Lord Harris, he used prize money from his successful military campaign in India to buy it. Six generations of the Harris family covering the next 200 years or so. The 5th Lord Harris never married and therefore has no one to handover the property to, because of this the 4th Lord Harris gifted the house, with its 3,000 acre estate to a charitable trust which is administered by a Board of Trustees, the 5th Lord Harris still lives on the estate but not in the house. The house doesn’t open until 1pm so we walked round the grounds, they still have a kitchen garden which we think may provide food for the cafe, but it may not! Then we went and ate our lunch in the car before heading round to the main entrance of the house. It is a lovely house, you actually enter via the Orangery which is a little strange, but before long you are in the main entrance hall, the last owner collected clocks and there are some fantastic ones on display. You are allowed to walk round most rooms, but not unfortunately take any photos, so it will just have to be a case of trying to remember things. There was a lovely library with one of the steps that turns into a chair, I have always been fascinated by them! After walking round the house we thought we might have a coffee but in the end decided to just head off to the hotel before walking into Faversham. We had a couple of walks one called the Gunpowder trail which tells the story of the industrial and maritime heritage of the town. Probably the most impressive part of this walk, from my point of view, was the Almshouses, they spread each side of the church, dating from 1863 they were built for gunpowder workers and their families. I am not sure how many houses there were but they looked quite large and slightly surprisingly they were houses rather than bungalows. We walked round to site of the old mills then up to the river where we joined the Town Walk. I hadn’t realised but Faversham was so important that in the 11th century Faversham had joined the Confederation of Cinque Ports as a Limb of Dover. The market square has existed since at least Domesday 1086, and is the oldest in Kent. The Guildhall has wooden Elizabethan pillars from c1574 but the upper floor had to be rebuilt in 1814 after an apprentice party got out of hand! The Ship Inn, which is no longer a pub is said to be where Elizabeth I stayed and Shakespeare and his players are said to have performed here. My favourite streets is Abbey Street, it has a number of medieval merchants houses built around 1538, although the Abbey, which was built in 1147 no longer exists. We walked all the way to the end to Quay Lane which has medieval warehouses dating from 1475 and a collection of boats moored alongside the quay. One of them actually took part in the D day evacuations. We walked back along Abbey Street and past Queen Elizabeths Grammar School which was founded on land gifted by Elizabeth I in 1576 as there was no longer a place of education in Faversham after the resolution of the Abbey. From here it was a short walk back to Market Place where we decided it was probably time for something to eat, then we headed back to the hotel to have a relax before visiting Rochester tomorrow.
