The site of the Oare Gunpowder Works, sometimes known as Davington Wood Mills, is situated near the western boundary of the parish of Faversham. The Works is represented by a scatter of upstanding buildings, some in light industrial or storage use and some in use as dwellings, by the ruins and foundations of other buildings and by the earthworks of leats, watercourses, dams, an aqueduct, a tramway and other features. The remains are dispersed for 800m along the valley of a minor stream which drained into Oare Creek. The majority of the buildings were set into the foot of the western side of the valley, giving them some elevation above the valley floor. Other buildings, now largely removed, occupied the valley floor itself to take advantage of the water power and of the communications provided by the leat system.

Part of the south-eastern side of the site has been destroyed by gravel quarrying and is now occupied by a re-formed lake and made-up open ground. The effect of these operations on the site was fortunately limited. Outside the series of small industrial compounds the site is covered in scrubby woodland and dense patches of nettles and brambles and presents an appearance similar to that which it would have presented when the Works were in operation; the underwood not only provided a source for charcoal but also served to limit the blast from any accidental explosions.

Gunpowder manufacturing works at Oare appear from documentary sources to have been in operation from the early 18th century. They were never under direct state control but rather in the private ownership of individuals or families with specialist interest in the industry. By the time the form and arrangement of the Works becomes clear from maps from the 1840s onwards, they occupied the same area as the field evidence indicates and the majority of mapped structures can be equated with field remains and vice versa. In the second quarter of the 19th century, the detailed form of the works was probably affected by the unification in the single ownership of John Hall of the three principal works in Faversham – the Oare, Marsh and Home Works – and slightly later in the century by new controlling legislation. When, after the First World War, explosives manufacturers grouped together to form an umbrella holding company, Oare was included and thereby in 1920 became part of Nobel Industries Ltd. With the closure of manufacturing capacity elsewhere, the Oare and Marsh Works were refurbished in 1926, the year that Nobel Industries were absorbed into the Imperial Chemical Industries, and for a time became the largest gunpowder producer in Great Britain. The Works were closed in 1936 and Id’s black powder manufacturing was concentrated at Ardeer in Ayrshire.

On the closure of the Works the land and buildings were sold in various lots, the greater part of which are now owned by the Robert Brett Group, a gravel extraction company. In the light of threats to the site from gravel extraction on part of it English Heritage recorded it in May and June 1991as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.