Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary

Parish church. The building dates from circa 1200, with a 13th-century chancel, 14th-century tower, and 16th-century nave and aisle. It was restored in 1874–75 by Ferrey, particularly the chancel. The walls are constructed of flint in part knapped and coursed with rubble stone, brick repairs and additions. The roof is plain tiled.

The church comprises a chancel, transept chapels, nave, south aisle, western tower, and south porch.

The west tower has a north-west stair turret and tall angle buttresses offset four times, with battlements and a recessed spire. The belfry features two-light Decorated windows, and the south front has a moulded west doorway and clockface. The south aisle has a brick upper stage with large stone blocks below the eaves set in knapped flint wall, containing four re-used 15th-century windows. A two-storey battlemented porch stands on the south side with double hollow chamfered inner and outer doorways. The nave's north wall has four buttresses and similar knapped flint with re-used 15th-century fenestration. The north and south transepts have window heads infilled with red brick; the north transept retains an 18th-century wooden Venetian window and a large four-light leaded window. The east window of the south transept, in a shallow projection, has three lights with three circles in the head enclosing three trefoils linked by intersecting tracery, dating to circa 1280. The chancel was restored in the 19th century with new fenestration. Blocked double arches in the north arcade indicate a lost aisle.

Interior

The tower arch is tall with double chamfered moulding on octagonal responds decorated with stylised flower ornament. The nave has a five-bay arcade with piers of chestnut and one oak, formerly imitating stone pillars but exposed since 1874, with a new arch braced to the wall plate. The nave roof has four crown posts; the aisle roof has six crown posts. A 19th-century chancel arch replaces the original. Originally identical arches led from the chancel to the transepts with hollow and roll moulded and chamfered arch and attached shafts. The reveal of the south transept east window has attached marble shafts. The chancel features a string course and drip moulds decorated with heads and naturalistic leaf ornament.

Fittings

A 15th-century stone reredos, rare in England, comes from Troyes. It shows five scenes of the Passion above and the Last Supper and Adoration below. Sedilia in the chancel have three round-headed seats with marble colonnettes. A trecusped piscina stands on the eastern wall. Misericord stalls—three to the south and four to the north with 19th-century replacements—show 14th-century carvings of animals, human faces, Green Man, and foliation. A 15th-century rood screen base survives with eight ogee traceried panels.

A square-headed piscina in the south aisle and a chamfered elliptical wall recess (said to be for the tomb of a member of the Warham family) also remain. Another piscina, now on the outside of the north transept, originally stood in the north aisle.

Early 14th-century stained glass survives in the chancel south window. The west window, dating to 1920, is a memorial to the last member of the Oxenden family.

Monuments

In the nave: Thomas Cinder (d.1716) has a large grey marble wall tablet with a Death's head and Corinthian pilasters with enriched scrolls and open segmental pediment.

In the north chapel: Sir Thomas Palmer (d.1625) is commemorated by a standing black and white wall monument by Nicholas Stone, showing full-length figures of Sir Thomas and Lady Margaret on a tomb chest with Corinthian columns carrying a segmental pediment with a smaller pediment thrusting through it, reclining putti, an arcaded background, and a bracket to the entablature. Another monument to Sir Thomas Palmer (d.1656), erected 1718, is a black and white standing wall monument with a plinth and Corinthian columns to a segmental pediment with putti and a portrait bust. Streynsham Master (d.1724) is memorialised by a white marble double wall plaque with a winged Death's head at the base and tripled Corinthian pilasters supporting a tripled broken segmental pediment with cartouche and martial achievements with an urn above.

In the south (Oxenden) chapel: Charles Tripp (d.1624) has a black pedimented wall plaque with side pieces containing two angels in oval wreathed recesses, decorated with cherub heads on wings. The Oxenden Monument of 1682, suggested to be by Arnold Quellin, is a free-standing black and white marble monument with a large white marble base inscribed and supported at the corners by black scrolls topped by ox heads with drapes between them. A tall obelisk with fruit and flower garlands carved down the sides is topped with a vase. Four putti at the corners—two leaning on shields, one draped with a skull, and a fourth holding a helmet—complete the composition.

The chapel was paved and given wrought iron screens at the same time (1681, from the bequest of Sir George Oxenden). The screens have simple uprights in four north panels with three raised sections topped by ball finials and a central cross, with leafed and bifurcated ironwork. A double-leaf gate with overthrow stands to the south, with a single-leaf gate to the old rood stair door.

This is a major work, certainly within Kent. From 1282 to 1547 the church was a collegiate church attached to Wingham College, which in its time produced four Archbishops and three bishops.