Church Of St George

Church of St George, Sevenoaks Weald

This is a two-phase 19th-century church built in 1820 as a chapel of ease, with a chancel added in 1872 by the architect Thomas Graham Jackson. The church was later given parish status in 1894. A modern extension was constructed in 2008–9.

The 1820 church is built of ragstone with limestone dressings to the nave and features a slate roof. It comprises a four-bay nave with a tower at the west end. The tower has two stages: the lower stage has large diagonal buttresses and a pointed doorway with a large two-light Perpendicular window above it. The belfry stage contains one-light pointed and cusped openings to the east and west faces. The nave windows are two-lights filled with cusped Y-tracery, and buttresses with offsets mark out the bays. A porch is located at the south-east end of the nave.

The chancel, added by Jackson, is slightly lower than the nave and built of ragstone with sandstone dressings. Its windows are copied from medieval examples at Chartham. The east window contains four lights with cusped trefoil and quatrefoil elements in the head. The 21st-century extension runs the length of the nave in a simple, modern design with rendered walls, featuring a transeptal projection at its east end and a large lean-to roof with three skylights.

The interior walls are plastered and whitened. The most striking feature is the keel-shaped plaster ceiling from 1820, which rises from just below the springing level of the window arch heads, causing the windows to cut into the ceiling with triangular-shaped penetrations. The ceiling is divided into large panels by thin ribs. The chancel roof, by contrast, is five-sided and divided into square panels, decorated with wreathed Chi-Ro and IHC emblems. The chancel arch has trefoil responds and is part of Jackson's 1872 work.

The church contains several items of interest. From 1820 there is a west gallery set on thin wooden posts and canted forward in the centre, with nave seating that appears to date from the same period but has been extensively rearranged. Most pew ends are decorated with Gothic detailing. The east end contains Victorian work of some elaboration. A reredos features five panels of mosaic by T Gambier Parry depicting the Crucifixion in the centre flanked by Biblical scenes, with two paintings—one of the Nativity, the other of the Marys at the Tomb—applied to either side. Stained glass in the west window (1872) and north window (1874) is by Powell and Sons to designs by Jackson, though now in poor condition. A brass band across the east wall commemorates K D Hodgson, who died in 1879. The organ has decorated pipes. The south-east window contains a drop-sill sedilia, and a conventional altar rail and stalls are present. An octagonal font at the west end has quatrefoil detailing on the bowl.

A painting of the original church hangs at the west end, showing the nave as it is today but with no visible tower. Although the nave and tower are customarily dated to 1820, it is possible the tower was built shortly after the nave, as the absence of a tower in the painting is difficult to explain as an artist's omission.

Thomas Graham Jackson (1835–1924), who designed the chancel, was a leading architect of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was articled to George Gilbert Scott from 1858 and began independent practice in 1862. He is best known for his secular work, particularly extensive commissions within the University of Oxford, and was also a considerable scholar who wrote several books on historic architecture. He was created a baronet in 1913.

The modern extension contains kitchen and meeting rooms.