Queenborough & Rushenden

Queenborough & Rushenden

Queenborough

Queenborough is a small town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale Borough of Kent situated in South East England.

Queenborough is two miles (3.2 km) south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to the Swale where it joins the River Medway. It is in the Sittingbourne and Sheppey parliamentary constituency.

Queenborough Harbour offers moorings between the Thames and Medway.  It is possible to land at Queenborough on any tide and there are boat builders and chandlers in the marina. Admiral Lord Nelson, is reputed to have learned many of his seafaring skills in these waters, and also shared a house near the small harbour with his mistress, Lady Hamilton.

Queenborough today still reflects something of its original 18th-century seafaring history, from which period most of its more prominent buildings survive. The church of Holy Trinity is the sole surviving feature from the medieval period. The town was first represented by two members of parliament in 1572.

 

Rushenden

Rushenden is a village in the Borough of Swale in Kent, England, of approximately 610 dwellings, it lies to the south of Queenborough.

The Community of Rushenden consists of a community store, a small social club and Rushenden Community House, a converted house used to severe the Community of Rushenden.

Re-generation has begun, the masterplan for Queenborough & Rushenden (created in 2003) represents an “exemplar for other master planning projects in the Thames Gateway” (South East Regional Design Panel May 2006).

A key element of the process has been the community consultation in the form of “Planning for Real”. A Green Charter and Arts strategy will ensure that the development addresses sustainability as well as using art to act as the “glue” that binds the community together with its surrounding landscape.

The masterplan (by Homes and Communities Agency with Swale Borough Council) sets out a comprehensive approach to regenerating Queenborough & Rushenden. It involves harnessing its setting, history and people, and combining with them proposals for housing, employment, community facilities an