Church of St Margaret

Church of St Margaret, Underriver, Seal

Built in 1867 to designs by George Gilbert Scott, one of the most successful church architects of the 19th century, the Church of St Margaret is a small village church constructed of Kentish ragstone with sandstone dressings and red clay tile roofs. The building is a two-cell structure with late 13th-century Gothic Revival detailing.

The church comprises an aisleless, three-bay nave with a lower, narrower two-bay chancel, a north porch, and a north organ chamber and vestry. A double bellcote sits over the west gable. The north porch has a timber superstructure set on low stone walls with a trefoil cusped bargeboard over the entrance. The east and west windows are both of three lights; the east window has a cusped circle in its head, while the side windows are uniform with two lights and a cusped lozenge in the head. A stringcourse runs around the original building immediately below the window sills.

Internally, the walls are plastered and whitened. The junction of the nave and chancel is marked by a moulded arch, its inner order resting on a shaft with a foliage capital rising from a fluted corbel. The chancel windows have shafts at the edge of the reveals. The nave roof is seven-sided with raised tie-beams and crown-posts, while the chancel roof is nearly semi-circular. The nave floor alleyways are laid with red and black quarry tiles.

The church retains much of its original Victorian seating, with nave ends of inverted Y-section and chancel stalls featuring poppy heads with pierced frontals and open arches on the back of the front row. An octagonal font with carved decoration stands in the nave. The organ case, designed by W.D Caröe in 1934, is a fine piece with traceried woodwork and multiple groups of pipes on the north side of the chancel.

St Margaret's was built on a new site in 1867 following the creation of Underriver parish in 1866. Much of the cost was met by John R Davison of Underriver House, who chose the dedication in memory of his mother Margaret Pearson Davison. The vicar, the Reverend Thomas Offspring Blackall, contributed £400. Construction was undertaken by Henry Constable, a builder from Penshurst, at a contract price of £1,931. The church opened on 8 June 1867, though consecration did not take place until 16 July 1875.

George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) began his practice in the mid-1830s and became the leading church architect of his era. His new churches characteristically derived their harmonious character from late 13th and early 14th-century architecture. Beyond his church work, Scott designed important secular buildings including the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras. He received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1859 and was knighted in 1872, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

An organ chamber and vestry designed by W.D Caröe were added to the north side of the chancel in 1930, replacing designs originally drawn up in 1907. The work was carried out by Edward Punnett and Sons of Tonbridge at a tender of £601. The churchyard was consecrated for burials in 1889.

A timber First World War memorial lychgate with a high coffin-rest forms the entrance to the churchyard to the north-west of the church. South of the church stands the old school, dated 1850, which before the building of the new church may have been used as a chapel of rest and for afternoon Sunday services.