Business events in Havant

A town built on a crossroads

Havant grew where two old tracks crossed. The council's heritage trail describes an east to west coast road older than the Romans, met by a path running down towards Langstone Harbour, and the town's crossroads still sit on that junction. St Faith's Church stands beside it: the trail dates the present building to the 12th century, much restored in the 19th, with traces of Roman foundations found beneath it during repairs in 1832.

Water made the town's name and, for a long time, its trade. The Homewell Spring is the only one of Havant's springs still open to view, and the trail calls it almost certainly the source of the town's name. The same spring suited parchment making, and Havant was known for parchment and for gloves. The old Homewell Parchment Works is now a Grade II listed building on Historic England's list.

Work in the borough today

Havant Borough Council points to advanced manufacturing and engineering as the borough's particular strength, and names Lockheed Martin among the global companies based here. The ONS business register counted 4,440 enterprises in the borough in 2026: that is the figure for the whole of Havant borough, which also takes in Waterlooville, Emsworth and Hayling Island, not the town alone.

Two business parks stand out in the council's own list of premises and sites. Langstone Technology Park, by the A27 junction, was once home to IBM's first factory in the UK and is now a 40 acre site with about 480,000 square feet of workspace. Dunsbury Park, beside junction 3 of the A3(M), is a 100 acre industrial and manufacturing park and a designated tax site within the Solent Freeport.

Getting to an event here

Havant station is on North Street, in the town itself. South Western Railway's station page sends trains towards Brighton and London from platform 1 and towards Portsmouth and Southampton from platform 2, so the town is reachable along the coast in both directions as well as from London. National Rail lists 492 spaces in the station car park. By road, the council describes the borough as sitting at the interchange of the A3(M), the A27 and the M27 corridor.

Business events listed in the town have tended to meet at The Bear Hotel on East Street, in the old centre. For more along this stretch of coast, see Waterlooville to the north, Emsworth to the east, Rowlands Castle up the line, and the whole of Portsmouth and the south coast. New to these mornings? What happens at a business breakfast explains the usual shape.