Church Of St Mary The Virgin

TR 03 SW ORLESTONE CHURCH LANE (east side) 6/87 Church of St. Mary the Virgin 2.11.57 GV II* Parish church. Late C12/early C13 origin, altered C14, and heavily restored 1883-4 by T. Blashill. Ragstone, part rendered with plain tiled roof. Chancel, nave with shingled bell turret, western porch and vestry to south. C19 western porch with timber upper walls on flint and stone base, made up in part of window tracery removed here after restoration. Trecusped bargeboard. C19 west window, a rounded triangular oculus. Shingled turret with small lucarnes and weather vane. Timber framed C19 south vestry. Nave and chancel with cusped lancets to west, and 2 and 3 light windows with cusped sexfoil over, with offset buttresses, incorporating chimney and stoke hole at southern re-entrant to chancel. East end all of 1883-4. Interior: double framed gallery/belfry support, possibly C17in origin, but now largely C19. Roof of 2 tall crown posts on moulded tie-beams, all much restored 1883. Chancel arch set within stepped-in chancel, with heavy chamfered arch on octagonal responds with deeply undercut capitals. Crown post roof, late Cl9. Copy of nave roof. Fittings: simple chamfered piscina in chancel, roll moulded piscina in nave and small ogee headed niche or stoup by south door. Good quality C19 fittings: colonette-rail to altar, choir stalls, reading desk/half- screen to chancel wooden pinnacled lectern. Alabaster font on Early English style column, with Evangelists' symbols on bowl sides. "Tudor" style Roll of Honour carved wooden tablet (for 1914-18, with 1939-45 additions). Glass of 1888; 1893 and 1898 by Holiday. The glass and monuments in the church are largely late C19/early C20 memorials to the Oliver family. Fragments of masonry on the west wall include late C12 (Canterbury style Early English) capitals (one dated 1884) and 2 coffin lids with calvary crosses bottonée. Royal Arms of 1828 over west door, and painted C19 texts over chancel arch and west doorway: In Obitu Pax : Post Tenebrus Lux. (See B.O.E. Kent I, 442).

Listing NGR: TR0002134223