Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre, Gillingham: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

Kent’s first out-of-town shopping centre, opened around a Savacentre hypermarket in October 1978, still free to park at for six hours and still anchored by the Sainsbury’s that hypermarket became. It changed hands in June 2024 and almost nothing online has caught up. Here is the operator’s own wording on hours, parking and the M2 junction, the four different floor areas four different people publish, and the things nobody publishes at all.

Last checked 9 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Hempstead Valley sits in a dip off Hempstead Valley Drive between Gillingham and Rainham, a couple of minutes from the M2. It is an enclosed, largely single-storey mall wrapped around a very large Sainsbury’s and an 80,000 sq ft Marks and Spencer, with a multi-storey deck, an undercover car park beneath the supermarket and four surface car parks colour-coded red, yellow, blue and orange. It opened in October 1978 and the operator is happy to tell you it was Kent’s first out-of-town shopping centre.

The web address in circulation is the right one, which is not something we get to write often. hempsteadvalley.com resolves, is this centre, and is properly server-rendered — fourteen of its pages could be read straight through on 9 September 2026, including the store directory, the hours, getting here, facilities and accessibility. One warning for anyone digging: the site has two different about pages. The one at /about carries the local history and the development story; the one at /about-us carries the trading details and the company registration. Read only one and you get half of it.

Ownership is the thing to get right here. Our own master list said the owner was unknown. It is not. The centre trades as Endeavour Gillingham Limited, company number 15596407, and behind that sits Sterling Property Ventures, which bought Hempstead Valley in June 2024 as one of seven assets in a £236m portfolio sold by BlackRock on behalf of British Airways Pensions Trustees. The letting agent names Sterling as the landlord outright. Anything you read that still puts this centre with BlackRock or a pension fund is more than two years out of date.

What follows is drawn from the operator’s own pages, Companies House filings on two companies, the June 2024 trade coverage of the sale, two leasing brochures four years apart, Medway Council’s local plan and retail evidence base, three KentOnline reports, and the charging and parking databases. Where two sources disagree we have printed both and said who published each. Where nobody publishes something — and at Hempstead Valley that includes both anchors’ opening hours — we say so plainly.

One thing worth flagging before you read further, because it is a first for this series: four of the operator’s own pages give exactly the same opening hours, and a third-party listing agrees with them. Most operators contradict themselves across their own website. This one does not, and we are not going to manufacture a doubt where there is none.

Hempstead Valley shopping centre is a purpose-built indoor mall style of district shopping centre. The centre has attracted major multiples and was extended in the early 1990's.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on 9 September 2026 across five sources, and for once they all agree. The operator publishes Monday to Friday 9am to 8pm, Saturday 9am to 7pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm on its opening-hours page, on its homepage, on its centre-information page and on its about-us page — four of its own pages saying the same thing — and the third-party Seekent listing gives the same times. We normally spend a paragraph here explaining which operator page contradicts which. There is nothing to explain.

Every one of those pages carries the same rider: individual store hours may vary. That rider is doing real work at Hempstead Valley, because two of the tenant hours we could read do not sit inside the centre’s.

Greggs, in unit U68, publishes 7am on weekdays — two hours before the mall — and 8pm on Saturday, an hour after the mall’s stated close, and 4.30pm on Sunday, half an hour after it. TGJones, in unit 65, matches the centre exactly. Whether Greggs has its own external door or whether the centre’s published times are a floor rather than a ceiling is not stated by anyone.

The two anchors are the real gap. Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer both run their store pages as JavaScript applications, and both returned nothing readable — no hours, no address, nothing. A hypermarket of that size will almost certainly be trading before 9am and after 8pm, and it is the store most people come here for, but no source we could reach states its times. The usual fallback of checking Next, H&M or Mango’s server-rendered store pages does not help either: none of the three trades at Hempstead Valley.

There is no published festive schedule. Not on the operator’s site, not in the local press, not anywhere. If you are planning a trip between Christmas and New Year, ring 01634 387076.

Getting there

By road — and yes, we are printing the junction

The operator publishes the junction, so it goes on this page. Its getting-here page says the centre is "located only 2 minutes off the M2 at Junction 4". That is the whole of its road guidance, and it is enough. Visit Medway independently says "just off junction 4 of the M2". Set the satnav to ME7 3PD.

Completely Retail describes the position as convenient for the M2 and sitting between London and Dover, which is a fair summary of why a district centre of this size works out here: it catches the Medway Towns without asking anybody to drive into Chatham or Gillingham.

Parking

Parking is free to customers with a maximum stay of six hours — generous by any standard, and confirmed by the operator, by Visit Medway and by Parkopedia. Six hours at no charge is a longer allowance than most enclosed centres offer.

The car parks are colour-coded: red, yellow, blue and orange on the surface, plus a multi-storey with the useful levels being 1 and 3 for the M&S entrances, and an undercover car park beneath Sainsbury’s. The orange car park is the one under the supermarket.

How many spaces there are depends who you ask. GCW’s leasing brochures said 2,000 free spaces in September 2020 and again in July 2024; GCW’s own project page says 2,160. The operator publishes no total anywhere. Parkopedia counts them car park by car park and gives 528 for the multi-storey and 320 for the blue.

No height restriction is published by the operator. Parkopedia — crowd-sourced, so treat it as a warning rather than a fact — puts the multi-storey at 6ft 6in, about 1.98m, and records "no height restrictions" on the blue surface car park. Its page for the orange undercover deck would not load, and that is the one we would most want to know about. If you are in a van, a camper or anything with a roof box, park on the surface.

Nobody names a parking enforcement company or ANPR contractor for the site, and no coach park is published — although National Express does call here.

Motorbikes and bikes

The operator publishes dedicated motorcycle spaces opposite Bakers + Baristas and covered bays under Sainsbury’s, which is more than most centres bother to say. Cycle parking is at Sainsbury’s, and Seekent adds that the covered bicycle parking sits inside the orange car park beneath the supermarket. There is a dedicated cycle path, about three miles from the A2 at Rainham Mark.

By bus

The operator lists the services and the stops, and does not name the bus companies — so neither will we.

• 132 — every 12 minutes, Monday to Sunday, from Chatham via Rainham. Bus stop A.
• 116 and 113 — hourly to Chatham, Medway Hospital and Wigmore. Bus stop B. No Sunday service.
• 130 — Monday to Saturday, Medway Maritime Hospital to Maidstone.
• National Express — bus stop C.

By train — and be honest with yourself about this

There is no walkable station and the operator does not pretend there is. It names Gillingham and Rainham, both served from London Victoria and by HS1 from St Pancras, and then says plainly that either is "approximately 10-15 minutes by taxi" from the centre. That is a taxi time, not a walking time, and it is the honest answer. No walking distance is published because there is not a sensible walk to publish.

No taxi rank at the centre is published either, so if you are coming by rail, book the return leg before you start shopping.

Accessibility

The operator describes the centre as fully wheelchair accessible, with ground-level entry and lifts to the upper floors. Every two-floor store has lift access; M&S and TK Maxx are reachable by lift or stairs.

Wheelchairs can be borrowed, but they must be booked — the operator says to ring 01634 387076. Note that the operator mentions wheelchairs only. Visit Medway says there is free scooter hire as well; the operator does not say so, and we have not printed it as fact.

Blue badge bays are spread widely: the undercover car parks beneath Sainsbury’s, the multi-storey on levels 1 and 3 close to the M&S entrances, near the TK Maxx entrance, and in both the red and the yellow outside car parks. Parent-and-toddler spaces are in the same places plus red and yellow.

Sunflower lanyards are available for hidden disabilities. There is a RADAR-key disabled toilet near Costa Coffee and Hays Travel, and accessible toilets in the ladies’, the gents’, Sainsbury’s and M&S. Defibrillators are sited by the Amazon lockers, Costa Coffee and Hays Travel.

The Changing Places toilet is Sainsbury’s, not the centre’s. The operator’s own facilities page attributes it to the supermarket, which means it is tied to Sainsbury’s hours and to Sainsbury’s layout rather than to the mall’s. That is worth knowing before you rely on it.

No hearing loop is mentioned anywhere, and we found no AccessAble or Euan’s Guide entry for the centre.

The shops

We counted the operator’s own directories on 9 September 2026: 48 entries on the shops page, 14 on the restaurants page and one on the leisure page — 62 tenants if you count the food, 63 with the gym. Two of the 48 are parcel lockers rather than shops. The operator’s about page still says "over 50 retailers" and GCW’s July 2024 brochure says 55 brands, so the centre is, unusually, underselling itself.

The anchors

Sainsbury’s — one of Kent’s largest, and the direct descendant of the Savacentre hypermarket the whole place was built around in 1978. GCW’s July 2024 brochure records that it reopened in 2021 after a full refit on a new 30-year indexed lease, which is about as strong a signal of commitment as a supermarket gives. That is a single source and we could not check it against a second.

Marks and Spencer — 80,000 sq ft with a food hall, Medway’s largest, built in the Phase I extension and completely refurbished in 2007.

TK Maxx — arrived in 2016 and is named as a third anchor by the letting agent.

What has arrived, with dates

• Home Bargains — Saturday 15 November 2025, into the old BHS unit, announced by KentOnline on 6 August 2025. No unit size was published.
• JD Gyms — signed January 2022, opened summer 2022. 20,000 sq ft including a 6,500 sq ft mezzanine, on a 15-year lease at £130,000 a year. Those are the only lease terms published for any unit at this centre.
• Burger King drive-thru — open by 7 September 2022, per the operator’s own news post.
• The restaurant area — 2015. TK Maxx — 2016. M&S — 1992. All three dates come from the operator’s own January 2025 news post. Note the operator’s about page says only "the early 1990’s" for M&S, so its own two pages are a year or two apart on that one.
• McDonald’s is described as a recent opening by the letting agent, with no date attached anywhere. We are not inventing one.

What has gone

BHS closed on Saturday 6 August 2016, announced by KentOnline four days earlier. No store size and no staff number were published then or since.

There is a neat and slightly melancholy circularity to that. Savacentre was the joint hypermarket venture between Sainsbury’s and BHS. Hempstead Valley was built around one of them in 1978 and had both parents on site for decades. In 2016 it lost the BHS half, and the unit then stood empty for nine years until Home Bargains took it in November 2025. That connection is ours, drawn from the operator’s own "originally called Savacentre" line and the dated closure — no source states it.

Beyond BHS, no closure at Hempstead Valley has been dated by anybody. There is no archived directory, no gift-card acceptance list and no local-press round-up of departures that we could find, so we cannot give you the usual before-and-after comparison. Frankie & Benny’s, Bella Italia, Argos, Clintons and Ernest Jones are all still on the directory, which is worth saying given how many of those names have gone elsewhere.

Eating and leisure

Fourteen food operators: Bakers + Baristas, Bella Italia, Boba Time, Burger King, two Costas (one of them at The Venue), Frankie & Benny’s, GDK, Greggs, Jamaica Blue, the M&S café, McDonald’s, Nando’s and Subway. The single leisure tenant is JD Gyms.

The operator claims a piece of history for the food offer: "The original Picnic Parlour at Hempstead Valley was ‘the UK’s first Food Court’". That is the operator quoting itself and it is corroborated by nobody, so take it as a claim rather than a fact — but it is a claim of a kind that is usually made by centres twenty years younger than this one.

Useful to know

Quiet hours, and the gap in them

"On Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, we do not play music on the shopping mall to make the centre more autism friendly." That is the operator’s own wording, and two music-free windows a week is a better commitment than most centres make.

But no times are given for either window. "Monday mornings" and "Friday afternoons" is all you get — no start, no finish. Individual shops may still be playing their own music regardless. If quiet matters to your trip, ring 01634 387076 and ask when the windows actually run.

Six hours, free

The six-hour free allowance is the practical reason to come here rather than into Chatham. It is long enough for a supermarket shop, a meal and a gym session without watching a clock, and there is no tariff to work out.

Lockers, cash and the small stuff

There is an Amazon locker called "Brisbane" between Hays Travel and Costa, and an InPost locker by Vodafone. Cash machines are at one main bank of machines near The Perfume Shop and Vodafone, with more inside M&S and Sainsbury’s. There are photo booths, recycling bins, and parent-and-child rooms with changing facilities. Customer toilets are in the middle of the mall.

Charging while you shop

Ten 22kW Type 2 connectors on the ChargePoint network sit outside the Sainsbury’s underground car park, at 42p per kWh or £2.40 an hour. The operator’s count and Zapmap’s count match exactly, which almost never happens. What there is not is any rapid DC charging — 22kW is a useful top-up across a six-hour visit, not a fast charge.

Things nobody publishes

We could find no operator statement on free Wi-Fi, a dogs or assistance-dogs policy, lost property, a gift card, a prayer or quiet room, a hearing loop, coach parking or a taxi rank. Seekent says there is complimentary Wi-Fi and Visit Medway says assistance dogs are welcome and that mobility scooters can be hired free — those are third parties, the operator says none of it, and we have not printed any of it as fact. Absent from the website is not the same as absent from the centre. Phone first if one of them decides your trip.

A search warning

"Hempstead" is a badly polluted search term. It returns Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, and a great deal of Hempstead and North Hempstead in Nassau County, New York — malls, a transit centre, railway stations. Several of our own searches came back full of them. Anchor anything you look up to ME7 3PD, Gillingham or Medway.

How it got here

Development started in 1974 and the site was planned from the outset as a major district centre of "originally approx 250,000 square foot", in the operator’s words. It was modelled on North American shopping complexes, and — a detail the operator preserves and few centres would bother to — it was originally planned as open-air retail space and redesigned as a covered mall before it was built.

The Savacentre hypermarket opened on 17 October 1978, and the centre marked its 40th birthday in October 2018, which fixes the operator’s own view of its opening year. Savacentre was the Sainsbury’s and BHS hypermarket venture, and its descendant is the Sainsbury’s that still anchors the place. Hempstead Valley was Kent’s first out-of-town shopping centre, which in 1978 made it an experiment rather than a formula.

The Phase I extension came in the early 1990s — the operator’s January 2025 news post says 1992, its about page says only "the early 1990’s" — and it contained the 80,000 sq ft Marks and Spencer, completely refurbished in 2007.

What the council said, twice, twenty years apart

The Medway Local Plan of 2003 designated Hempstead Valley a District Centre and then tried to freeze it. Section 6.2.12 records that the council was "concerned that any increase in comparison floorspace is likely to have an adverse impact on the strategy for Medway’s ‘city’ centre and the more traditional District Centres. As such only minor changes will be permitted during the period of the plan." Policy R7 put that into effect: development "will be limited to minor extensions not resulting in a net increase in retail floorspace, and improvements to existing facilities."

Medway’s later retail evidence base reads completely differently. It notes "a district centre at Hempstead Valley, which has a good presence of major retailers", places it third in the borough’s retail hierarchy, and says that "in contrast, Hempstead Valley has seen increased interest and recent investment in extending its offer" and that "there are stronger signs of market interest at Hempstead Valley". It still worries that "growth at Hempstead would be seen to impact upon town centres, particularly Gillingham and Chatham", and the North Kent Retail Study’s recommendation for it is the modest "modernise and support day-to-day uses". The document does not carry a date on its face, so we cannot pin those lines to a year.

The extension that was approved and may never have been built

On 12 April 2018 Medway Council’s planning committee approved, by 12 votes to 1, a 7,522 sq m retail and leisure extension on the existing yellow car park, with a two-tier raised car park deck replacing the blue and overflow parking, a net loss of 50 spaces, the new deck 35 metres from homes in Kingsdown Close, and conditions requiring the parking to be finished before opening, landscaping, and electronic signs showing space availability. KentOnline reported it as "five new large stores" — and named none of the five.

Councillor David Carr, Conservative, told the committee: "The number of car parking spaces doesn’t change very much…It’s a great place and it’s free." Councillor Dorte Gilry, Labour, argued that Hempstead Valley was competing more with the likes of Bluewater and other out-of-town shopping centres — a fair reading of a centre that sits about 20 miles down the A2 from Kent’s largest mall, and one that also explains why Medway kept worrying about Chatham and Gillingham instead.

We can find no evidence the extension was ever built, and no evidence it was abandoned either. GCW was still marketing the associated 550-space multi-storey in its September 2020 brochure. Home Bargains eventually went into the empty BHS unit in 2025 rather than into any new build. That is where the public record stops.

The 2024 sale

In June 2024 Sterling Property Ventures bought a seven-asset portfolio for £236m from BlackRock’s real estate business acting for British Airways Pensions Trustees Limited. CoStar dated it 17 June and Retail Destination 19 June; they agree on everything else. Hempstead Valley was one of the seven, described in the particulars as 449,079 sq ft on 26.6 acres, 98% occupied, anchored by M&S and Sainsbury’s.

The £236m is the portfolio, not this centre. The other six were a distribution unit at Calder Park in Wakefield, another at Interchange 26 in Bradford, two Grade A office buildings at Windsor Dials, the mixed-use Chapel Quarter in Nottingham, the canal-side restaurant units at Water’s Edge in Brindleyplace, Birmingham, and three retail warehouses at Longwell Green in Bristol — over £18.5m of combined annual income. No price has ever been published for Hempstead Valley on its own and we will not divide the total to invent one.

The ownership chain, from Companies House: the centre trades as Endeavour Gillingham Limited (15596407), incorporated on 27 March 2024, registered care of Sterling Property Ventures at Scott House, Waterloo Station. Its controlling company is SPV Endeavour Limited (15516476), recorded in the "75% or more" share and voting bands, which in turn is controlled by Sterling Endeavour Holdco Limited. Those are bands, not percentages, and nobody publishes the exact shareholding. CoStar named LetterOne as the equity investor behind the vehicle; that is one source and we flag it. MAPP took on property management. James Howarth, Sterling’s managing director, said at the time that the plan was "to have a minimum of £1billion of assets under management" — a statement about Sterling, not about this centre.

Since the sale the centre has kept spending. Its own January 2025 news post dates the current development project to November 2024, and when Home Bargains was confirmed, centre manager Julie Rayner told KentOnline: "We are very pleased to have Home Bargains here - and at a time when a lot of investment has gone into the shopping centre to improve the aesthetic."

Where it sits

Hempstead Valley is a district centre doing a district centre’s job: the weekly shop, the school uniform, the phone contract, the gym and a Nando’s, in one free car park off the M2. It is not trying to be Bluewater or Lakeside, and Medway’s own planners spent two decades making sure it did not try. The nearest thing to a peer in Kent, in scale and in job, is Westwood Cross over in Thanet.