Parish Church Of St Mary

The parish church of St Mary was built between 1868 and 1869 by Arthur Blomfield. It was constructed and funded by Mary, widow of John Griffith, Dean of Rochester. The exterior is of snecked rubble ragstone with a Kent tile roof, while the interior features yellow brick walls with red brick dressings. The church comprises a nave with a western narthex and gallery, north and south aisles, a southern porch, a southern transept, and a chancel with a north aisle.

The west front is a detailed original design, incorporating a shallow gabled porch with limestone coping and a vesica containing a small figure of Christ in Majesty. A two-centred arched portal is set within the porch, flanked by detached shafts. Buttresses are present on either side, with the right-hand buttress also serving as a stair turret. A tripartite window arrangement sits above the porch, featuring two-light windows flanked by lancets, a projecting statue niche, and complex buttressing marking the transition to a polygonal apex belcote with a spirelet. The remainder of the exterior is simpler, with a five-bay nave and a three-bay chancel with a clerestory featuring two-light clerestory windows under hood moulds, and paired lancets to the aisles. The east end has three stepped lancets.

Inside, the nave piers are quatrefoil in section, topped with fine stiff-leaf capitals. Arches are carried under continuous hood moulds with foliated corbels, and the spandrels and clerestory walls are decorated with polychromatic brickwork. The roof is boarded and canted with paired principals. The west end arrangement is elaborate, with the three windows deeply recessed under stepped arches. Shafts enclose a gallery, pierced by a two-light arrangement above a legend recording Mary Griffith’s endowment of the church in 1869. The chancel is raised by three steps and features a moulded arch of three orders on tall shafts and foliated corbels. The north side has a two-bay arcade of richly moulded arches on paired shafts with foliated capitals; the south side, towards the organ chamber, presents a tall moulded arch with two subordinate arches and a large cusped roundel. The chancel walls are decorated with herringbone brick and mastic. Expressionist glass by William G Blyth is set within the stepped east lancets. A tripartite reredos features a central panel depicting “Supper at Emmaus” by T Bromfield, which is of excellent quality, accompanied by side panels of mosaics by Salviati. The church has tiled floors and features full fittings including sanctuary rails, open-fronted stalls, open benches to the nave, a stone fronted openwork wooden pulpit. The church is described by Pevsner as "thoroughly convincing... tautly designed and with an excellent use of materials," and is considered one of Blomfield's best works.