Church Of St Peter And St Paul

Church of St Peter and St Paul

A medieval church substantially rebuilt and enlarged over successive centuries. The building dates from the 14th century with a late 14th or early 15th-century west tower. The nave was re-roofed in 1790–92 and underwent mid-19th-century restoration. A north vestry was added in 1950, followed by adjoining parish rooms in 1992.

The church is constructed of stone rubble and flint with freestone dressings and bands of knapped flint, under a slate roof. The plan comprises a single rectangular vessel of nave and chancel, a west tower, a south porch, a north vestry and parish rooms.

The exterior displays a shallow-pitched Georgian roof to the nave with very deep eaves supported on paired brackets. The east end has a gable treated as a pediment with an oculus window. A shallow battered buttress at the east end carries a band of flint above. The three-light east window is in 19th-century Perpendicular style. Three two-light windows of 1862 ornament the south side; the fourth westernmost window is weathered medieval work with two cusped lights below an octafoil. The south porch features a holy water stoup and a richly moulded, probably 14th-century, four-centred arched doorway with engaged shafts. The porch was partly rebuilt above this. An 18th-century sundial is fixed to the gable, with brick repair work above. A low blocked arch appears in the west wall of the nave. Carved medieval heads ornament the southwest, southeast and northeast corners of the nave. The north elevation displays banded knapped flint decoration.

The west tower comprises four stages topped by an embattled parapet. Diagonal stepped buttresses and a projecting northeast stair turret flank it. A small west doorway with roll moulding leads into the tower, above which sits a large window in a style similar to the southwest nave window. Two-light belfry windows feature cusped heads.

The interior retains a flat ceiling from 1790–92 with a cornice and plaster ceiling roses. Unusual carved stone corbels of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic form mark the locations of the medieval roof on the north and south walls. The north and west galleries are supported on slender clustered wooden columns and dated to 1763 (west) and 1818–19 (north). Their fronts are decorated with blind traceried panels, and they contain simple gallery seats on shaped brackets, some boxed in. The north gallery extends to the east wall.

The east wall holds an early 19th-century carved wooden reredos of cusped blind arches with a brattished cornice. The 1852 east window, glazed as a memorial to Dr Pinching, is the only stained glass in the church. On the south wall stands a rib-vaulted triple sedilia of trefoil-headed arches on clustered columns with a piscina alongside. The arches and columns are heavily painted; the rib vaults with small bosses appear medieval. The nave walls retain a 1860s dado of encaustic tiles. The pulpit, font and nave pews all date to the mid-19th century: the pulpit is timber with cusped decoration; the font is octagonal Caen stone decorated with blind panels on a clustered shaft; and the nave benches are numbered with square-headed ends. Various wall monuments and inscription boards embellish the interior. The south porch, which retains a late-medieval roof, has been converted to a Dunkirk memorial chapel. A peel of eight bells includes five cast in 1656, with the remainder dating to the 19th or 20th centuries.

The ancillary features include a 1950 wooden lych gate war memorial with pitched tile roof to the west. A decorative metal gate in the churchyard south wall was cast at R. L. Priestley's works; its design is based on the arms of Sir Henry Sydney, Steward of the Honour of Otford and Lord High Steward of Gravesend in the 1560s, arms later adopted by the Corporation of Gravesend.

A church at Milton is first recorded in Domesday Book of 1086, apparently a predecessor of the present building on the same site, though no surviving 11th-century fabric has been definitively identified. The present structure combines Perpendicular architecture of the late 14th and early 15th centuries with late 18th-century restoration and subsequent 19th and 20th-century work. The tower is late 14th or early 15th-century; the south porch is 14th-century; and the nave is medieval except for its upper courses, which are late 18th-century additions made to support the 1790–92 re-roofing.

An 18th-century sundial attached to the gable of the south porch was designed by James Giles, former Master of the Free School (died 1780). The original west gallery was built in 1763 but was later enlarged, and a north gallery was added circa 1818–19, likely funded under the Church Building Act of 1818. The altarpiece dates to a similar period, and the organ was acquired in 1829. A restoration in 1852 added the nave pews, communion rails, the east window, pulpit and font. The sedilia and piscina were also restored, with new cusps for the sedilia commissioned. During the 1860s the sanctuary and nave walls were tiled and many windows replaced; one window in the south nave wall bears a date stone of 1862. The north vestry, lych gate and decorative metal gate date to 1950–51. The adjoining parish rooms are a 1992 addition incorporating two date stones of 1860 and 1862 from a former school and headmaster's house, as well as a carved gravestone cross. The sanctuary was restored and reordered circa 2004 following a collapse of the vault beneath.