Church Of St George

Church Of St George

This parish church on Princes Street dates from 1731–2, built to designs by Charles Sloane and funded under the 1711 Fifty New Churches Act from duties on coal entering London. The chancel was rebuilt and extended eastwards in 1892, and the north aisle was added in 1895–9 to designs by William and Charles Basset-Smith. The building has been subject to minor amendment as of 6 January 2014.

The church is constructed of yellow stock brick with stone dressings, primarily Bath stone with some Portland stone repairs, and has Stonewold concrete tile roofs. The plan comprises a nave with a west gallery and west tower, a north aisle, and an apsidal chancel with a northeast vestry.

The exterior is entirely Classical with relatively simple detailing. The tall four-stage west tower only slightly projects from the west end of the nave, featuring rusticated quoins and platbands. It has a Gibbs surround to the west doorway, and the tower windows consist of a mixture of tall round-headed windows and occuli. A slender spire with a ball finial and weathervane crowns the tower. The west end of the nave is blind on the south side and has one window on the north. The 19th-century apse features a plain brick parapet above a platband and cornice, with a Venetian east window reused from the original 18th-century apse. Windows in the east wall of the nave on either side were added in 1914. The nave's south side has a rendered parapet above a moulded stone cornice and two tiers of windows—the lower tier with shallow segmental heads and the upper tier taller and round-headed, linked by a platband. The 19th-century north aisle has 2-light round-headed windows with a transom, uncusped lights, and a roundel in the head, with the westernmost window being single light. The original north doorway has been re-sited in the west end of the aisle with a rusticated surround, keyblock, cornice, and two-leaf door with fielded panels. A flat-roofed 19th-century vestry in the northeast corner has a plain brick parapet and stone surrounds to windows and doors.

The interior is plastered and painted except for the dressings and columns of the north aisle. The nave has a flat ceiling with a decorative plaster oval and three ventilators, with a deep plain coved cornice supported on corbelled pilasters; these pilasters have been reduced in length above the north arcade. A platband decorated with small rosettes runs beneath the cornice. The chancel opens through a segmental arch on impost blocks decorated with rosettes. The apse features a plaster rib vault and is lined with two tiers of panelling, the upper tier having reeded pilasters, a triglyph frieze, and reeded shafts flanking the central light of the Venetian east window. The west gallery dates from 1764 and rests on slender timber posts, breaking forward at the centre. Its front has fielded panelling and a key frieze below the cornice, with a good staircase featuring turned balusters and a dado of fielded panelling. An upper gallery in the southwest corner has a plain front recessed into the space next to the tower. The four-bay north arcade of 1897 is in a Beaux Arts version of early 18th-century style, with segmental arches panelled on the soffit, resting on polished red Aberdeen granite columns with Tuscan capitals and bases.

Principal fixtures include 18th-century communion rails with chunky barleysugar balusters; they have panels with Italianate painting of 1893, a remnant of a large-scale late 19th-century decorative scheme in the chancel that has otherwise largely been painted out. The west gallery contains a George England organ from 1764, currently not working, with good carved decoration to the case. A drum pulpit of 1907 features reeded pilasters with holly and ebony inlay and curly brackets to the octagonal stem. A plain polygonal font from 1872 is in Perpendicular style. The east window glass dates from 1866 in pictorial style with very little leading. South nave windows are by Clayton and Bell, Heaton Butler and Bayne, and Moore and Son. The nave northeast and southeast windows date from 1914 and were given by the Society of Colonial Dames of America in memory of Princess Pocahontas.

Historically, an Anglo-Saxon church dedicated to St Mary stood at Gravesend on a different site. The first church on the present location was built in the late 15th century and became the parish church in 1544. This earlier building probably comprised a nave, chancel, and north aisle, and possibly a steeple or tower, situated some distance to the west of the present church. The Native American princess Pocahontas died in Gravesend in 1614 and is said to have been buried in the old church. That church was destroyed in the great fire of 1727 that devastated most of Gravesend. The present church was built in 1731–2 on the site of this destroyed structure.