A long-awaited community centre has finally opened - six years after residents were unceremoniously booted out of their previous village hall.

At an event to celebrate the occasion, Lady Rosemary Kingsdown opened the Painters Forstal Community Hall in the village, near Faversham, to rapturous applause.

It marked the end of an eight-year battle to complete the project - after residents said they felt “betrayed” after plans to buy a nearby building fell through.

Speaking at the opening, Professor Ben Bennett, chairman of the Painters Forstal Community Association (PCFA), acknowledged it had been a long time coming.

“Covid, delays to planning, post-Brexit cost inflation, Ukraine – costs keep getting away from us but something always turned up and that’s what I found deeply heartwarming,” he said.

“A community is only as good as the effort we all put into it, and community spirit is founded through knowing your neighbours.

“This project is at its starting point and it’s up to us to build the community up from this point on."

Funded partly by the National Lottery, bosses behind the scheme say they collected almost £800,000 for the project.

Designed by Nigel Brown, the proposals were first submitted to Swale Borough Council in 2020, with the designs since referred to by PFCA as “a modern take on a village hall”.

Alongside Mr Brown, praise was heaped onto Pearl Wall, a lifelong resident of the sleepy village, who donated the land on which the hall sits in memorial to her late friend Doris Knowler.

As a tribute to Mrs Knowler, who grew up a stone’s throw away from the new hall and was known to organise sporting games in the area, the land has been christened “Doris’s Pitch”.

Dr Victoria Ward, the hall’s community mobiliser, said: “When the seeds were first sown regarding building a brand-new hall for the village little did we know the toil and trouble that awaited us.

“But now we can stand back and see that all our dedicated, hard work was worth it.

“It is profoundly satisfying to see our community hall finally ready for use. The village hall stands tall as a symbol of community spirit and resilience.”

Cash-raising efforts started in 2015 when locals attempted to find £70,000 to buy Champion Hall, also known as Whitehill Methodist Chapel, after they were forced to stop using it.

The hall in Eastling Road was declared surplus to requirements by the Methodist Church in 2014 and sold in 2017 - despite the best efforts of the community to buy it.

Villagers said they felt “betrayed” by the church after raising £70,000 to buy their cherished hall back – only for a decision to be made to sell it to the Anglican Catholic Church.

Bookings to use the new hall can now be made via the Painters Forstal website or on Facebook page.