An abandoned railway yard earmarked for 30 flats will go under the hammer for £1m.

George Wilson Developments hopes to offload Faversham’s Station Road site after failing to attract a buyer for more than a year.

The Whitstable-based developer originally asked for £2.2m in December 2022 before slashing the price by £700,000 in October last year.

Enlisting the help of Clive Emson auctioneers, the firm hopes to sell land – which it says will cater for first buyers – with a £1 million guide price.

Josh Wilson, of George Wilson Developments, told KentOnline the firm remains committed to offloading the site but confessed the wider economy had limited opportunities for buyers.

“We just thought that's the right time for it to go to auction, it's a great site in the middle of Faversham.” said Mr Wilson.

“There’s been tons of interest in the property.

“It's not an excellent market for residential developers, the problem with it is interest rates.

“At the minute it's like 11%, but it was, two years ago, just hovering about 6%. It's a big increase.

“The reason we're not developing it is because we're not traditional residential developers, we're commercial developers – otherwise we would have built it ourselves because it's a great site.”

The land in question is an old railway yard near Faversham station nestled between Beaumont Terrace on the left, and Eurocenter Business Park on the right, which is also owned by George Wilson.

Faversham Recreation Ground is immediately to the north of the former works, and as part of the scheme, a pedestrian access route linking the park with the station would be formed to shorten walking times.

Network Rail sold the land to George Wilson Developments seven years ago for £150,000 and Mr Wilson’s company had originally planned to build 45 flats on the plot.

However, the number was lowered to 30 flats and two homes after Network Rail raised concerns in 2021 that a train could come off the tracks and crash into the homes.

The long, thin stretch of redundant land - located at the junction of the old Faversham Creek branch line - was previously granted permission to be turned into a commercial space but bosses behind the scheme snubbed this in favour of housing plans.

Councillors gave the project the go-ahead more than a year ago, praising it for its design and noting it was a “good use of a brownfield site”.

They also said the development “would be a vast improvement on what is currently there”.

Historically, the site formed part of the railway sidings used by a number of local companies, most notably Shepherd Neame while in more recent times the site was used as a railway depot connected to Faversham station and the wider railway network.

The three-storey apartment blocks have been designed in Victorian and Edwardian style in an effort to stay in-keeping with the architecture of the town’s station.

The land spanning almost two acres will go up for auction from March 18 – 20.