Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, a Grade I listed parish church, dates primarily from the 12th and 14th centuries with some 15th-century fenestration. The building has been little restored, though downpipes were added in 1870. It is constructed of coursed rubble and flint with a plain tiled roof.

The plan comprises a chancel, nave with aisles, a north-western tower, and a south porch. The tower features a string course and battlements, with lancets in four stages and a quatrefoil at the top. A circular north-eastern stair-turret rises from the tower. The west doorway has roll moulded and hollow chamfered detailing. The south aisle exhibits offset diagonal buttresses and a parapet. The chancel contains cusped 14th-century lancets to the south and restored 13th-century lancets to the north, along with a 3-light 15th-century Perpendicular east window set within the larger blocked jambs and drip mould of a 14th-century east window. The north aisle has 5 buttresses and Perpendicular 2-light windows with a simply chamfered north doorway.

The south aisle features 14th-century Decorated tracery with cusped paired lights and quatrefoils over, and a 3-light east window with cusped and foiled tracery and segmental hood. The south porch was extended in brick and pebbledashed, with a moulded and chamfered south doorway.

Interior

The nave contains 14th-century arcades comprising 3 bays to the north with the tower as the end bay, and 4 bays to the south. The piers are octagonal, set on seat-plinths with moulded capitals, those to the south being richer. The south arcade has hollow chamfered and wave-moulded detailing, while the north arcade is double chamfered. The roof comprises 5 crown posts with moulded collar beams and side purlins, and solid spandrels to raised tie beams. The aisle roofs are lean-to. The chancel has a Romanesque arch on imposts, with piers cut away and corbelled. A braced truss and tie beam roof with an embattled wall plate spans the chancel.

Fittings in the chancel include a cinquefoil-headed piscina and double and single sedilia, the larger to the east with colonnettes featuring moulded octagonal bases and capitals, and the smaller with a cinquefoiled head. Both are topped with a four-centred arch and embattled label. Two 15th-century benches with poppy-heads remain, one with 6 pierced and cusped panels and the other with 3 pierced panels.

The screen dates to the early 16th century and comprises 5 bays with attached shafts decorated with Tudor flower motif on a base with traceried panels and shields. An embattled transom runs into the tracery pattern, and a central frieze displays decorative motifs showing Renaissance influence. A 19th-century embattled top beam was later added.

In the nave stands a late 17th-century pulpit on a 19th-century base, transferred from Faversham parish church. It is pentagonal with enriched bolection moulded panels featuring festoons and ribboned festoons along the arris of each panel, a moulded cornice, and 3 semi-circular steps to the rear. Box pews extend into the south aisle, incorporating late medieval benches with poppy-heads and hollow chamfered end moulding.

The south aisle contains a cusped piscina with ogee head and animal head finial, and a tomb recess with segmental arch, embattled cornice and attached shafts. This recess holds a tomb chest and brass of Richard de Feversham, d.1381, measuring 24 inches. A 15th-century font with hollow octagonal bowl and decorated panels stands in the aisle. A 13th-century wooden parish chest features an incised trefoil-headed arcade and cross-hatched decorated iron flanges on the lid.

The north aisle contains a cusped ogee-headed piscina with a recess cut from the north-east corner. Some medieval floor tiles survive. Mutilated brasses in the south aisle include half-figures of Joan de Feverham and son, d.1360, measuring 14 inches, and full figures of Judge John Martyn, d.1436, measuring 56 inches. Martyn is depicted as a Justice of Common Pleas with his wife under a double canopy; he holds an inscribed heart and she has a lap dog at her feet.

Glass fragments survive: 14th-century fragments in the north aisle east window and 15th-century fragments in the chancel south-west window.