Faversham Abbey

Faversham Abbey was a Cluniac monastery founded in 1148 by King Stephen and Queen Matilda to the north-east of Faversham in Kent. A group of monks from Bermondsey Abbey arrived with Clarembald as the first abbot. The abbey stood on land later held by the Sondes family and now lies within the grounds of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School. Its buildings stretched about 360 feet in length, shorter than Canterbury Cathedral but longer than Rochester Cathedral. The cloister and monastic quarters were placed on the northern side of the site. The abbey served as the burial place for King Stephen, Queen Matilda, and their son Eustace IV of Boulogne. After the Dissolution in 1538, their reported bones were thrown into Faversham Creek and later reburied in the nearby parish church. Archaeologists led by Brian Philp excavated the site in 1965 and uncovered the empty tombs in 1964 near the former choir centre. The ruins were built from chalk, flint, ragstone, greensand, and Caen stone, with slate roofs from south Devon. Recent digs at Abbey Farm revealed a 150-foot-long Roman building with heated walls and a hypocaust system. The structure contained a bath house and an agricultural room, with painted plaster panels in green, red, and yellow. Broken stone walls and thousands of roof tiles were found, along with box flue tiles that once directed hot air upward. The discovery shows Faversham’s layers of history beneath the abbey’s remains.