St Mary's Church is in the village of

Chartham Chartham is a village and civil parish in the Canterbury district of Kent, England. It is situated on the Ashford side of the city, and is in the North Downs area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, south west of Canterbury, England. The Great St ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. It is an active Anglican

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

in the

diocese of Canterbury The Diocese of Canterbury is a Church of England diocese covering East Kent, eastern Kent which was founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury in 597. The diocese is centred on Canterbury Cathedral and is the oldest episcopal see, see of the Church o ...

. Constructed between 1285 and circa 1305, with a later tower of the fourteenth century. In 1875, the church was restored by

George Edmund Street George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 – 18 December 1881), also known as G. E. Street, was an English architect, born at Woodford in Essex. Stylistically, Street was a leading practitioner of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Though mainly an eccl ...

. St Marys is designated by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

as a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

An archaeological survey undertaken in 2010–11, found evidence of

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...

and Anglo-Saxon habitation. The present church dates from the late 13th century, with a traditional construction date of 1285. A

patent roll The patent rolls (Latin: ''Rotuli litterarum patentium'') are a series of administrative records compiled in the English, British and United Kingdom Chancery, running from 1201 to the present day. Description The patent rolls comprise a register ...

dating from the reign of Edward I records the partial remittance of a fine levied on the rector, "towards the works of his church begun by him". The architectural historian John Newman notes that there is strong stylistic evidence to suggest the involvement of

Michael of Canterbury Michael of Canterbury (fl. 1275 – 1321) was an English gothic architect responsible for work at Canterbury Cathedral and St Stephen's Chapel, at the Palace of Westminster. He also designed the Cheapside Eleanor Cross. Harvey (1950) credits ...

, the master mason at Canterbury Cathedral. The tower is later, of the fourteenth century. The church was restored between 1873 and 1875 by

. It is designated by

as a Grade I

. In 2018, the Commissary General of the

Diocese of Canterbury The Diocese of Canterbury is a Church of England diocese covering East Kent, eastern Kent which was founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury in 597. The diocese is centred on Canterbury Cathedral and is the oldest episcopal see, see of the Church o ...

delivered a significant judgement on the installation of closed-circuit television at St Marys. Allowing the application, the Commissary sought to balance public-access requirements, for which CCTV was necessary on security grounds, and the privacy expectations of parishioners. The church remains an active parish church with regular services.

Architecture and description

The original brass of Sir Robert de Septvans - geograph

The church is constructed of Kentish

knapped Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing w ...

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

with

ragstone Rag-stone is a name given by some architectural writers to work done with stones that are quarried in thin pieces, such as Horsham Stone, sandstone, Yorkshire stone, and the slate stones, but this is more properly flag or slab work. Near London ...

quoins Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

. It is of

cruciform Cruciform is a term for physical manifestations resembling a common cross or Christian cross. The label can be extended to architectural shapes, biology, art, and design. Cruciform architectural plan Christian churches are commonly describe ...

design, with

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

transepts A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building withi ...

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

and tower. The church has a number of features of particular note. The nave, transepts and crossing have "a magnificent series of c. 1300 timber roofs with large scissor-trussed rafters." The windows in the chancel are considered amongst the very best examples of Kentish

tracery Tracery is an architectural device by which windows (or screens, panels, and vaults) are divided into sections of various proportions by stone ''bars'' or ''ribs'' of moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the stonework elements that support the ...

. The stained glass, although "much renewed in 1881 (has) enough glass of c.1294 to guarantee the authenticity of the whole". The brass of the medieval knight, Sir Robert de Septvans, is the one of the oldest in the country and "none are more memorable". The church also contains monuments by Rysbrack and

Thomas Scheemakers Thomas Scheemakers (c. 1740 – 15 July 1808), or Thomas Scheemaeckers according to his own signature, was a sculptor in late 18th-century London. He was the last of the Scheemaeckers family of sculptors originally from Antwerp. Several of his wor ...

References

Bibliography

* {{cite book , last = Newman , first = John , author-link = John Newman (architectural historian) , year = 2013 , title = Kent: North East and East , series = The Buildings of England , publisher =

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

, location= New Haven, US and London , isbn = 9780300185065 , url = https://www.worldcat.org/title/kent-north-east-and-east/oclc/869127179?referer=br&ht=edition Church of England church buildings in Kent

1285 in Christianity