Church Of Saint Mary

Church of Saint Mary, Minster Church Street

A parish church of major historical importance, serving as the Mother Church of Thanet and an Anglo-Saxon minster church. The tower and nave date from the 11th and 12th centuries, while the chancel and transepts were added in the 13th century. The windows were partially replaced in the 15th century, and the building underwent substantial restoration in 1863 by architect Ewan Christian.

The structure is built of flint and rubble with some reused Roman brick and Caen stone dressings, covered with plain tiled roofs. The church comprises a chancel with 19th-century vestry, transepts, nave with aisles, and a western tower.

The three-stage tower features offset pilaster buttresses, string courses, and battlements, topped with a shingled spire. A truncated south-eastern stair turret is capped with a spirelet. The tower has round-headed belfry lights and a 19th-century Romanesque-style west doorway. The aisles are supported by three offset buttresses with plinth and string course, and are topped with battlements. The windows are of renewed 15th and 19th-century Perpendicular style with tracery. Both south and north doors have moulded hoods. The chancel and transepts are of unified design with offset clasping buttresses, moulded string course (raised around the transepts), and lancet windows including a group of three in the chancel east wall with a round-headed gable light above. Flying buttresses support the chancel, and a single-storey vestry to the south of the chancel was added by Ewan Christian in the 1860s. The exterior walls display several monumental plaques, mostly from the late 18th century, on the south side, transepts, and tower.

The interior contains a tower arch of semi-circular form resting on large half-round responds with scalloped capitals. The westernmost bays of the nave arcades show double-thickness masonry with blocked Norman windows, evidence of late 12th-century rebuilding. The arcades comprise five bays: the three easternmost of the south arcade date from around 1190 with round piers, abaci, scalloped capitals featuring zig-zag and billet moulding. The two eastern bays and the entire north arcade date from around 1180, with round capitals and bases to the south, and square abaci with waterholding bases and spurs to the north, some with crocketting and dogtooth decoration. The nave roof features six crown posts with round-headed lights to the tower and two in the nave east gable. Crossing arches to the nave and aisles follow the same pattern, with double-chamfered arches on round attached columns with moulded capitals.

The transepts, crossing, and chancel are all of a single build. The two-bay transepts display roll-moulded string course with attached shafts based on the string course, supporting vaults added in 1863 though springing from original bases. Original quadripartite rib-vaults without ridge ribs spring from the crossing, rising from below the arch capitals. The chancel arch is chamfered with a hollow-chamfered surround and attached keeled columns with mouldings. The four-bay chancel narrows progressively towards the east, with string course and attached wall shafts whose abaci form a continuous frieze enriched with circles and quatrefoil and trefoil designs. The quadripartite rib vault with keeled ribs springs from these attached shafts. The triple lancet east window has deeply moulded and beaded surrounds with paired attached shafts.

The furnishings include a chamfered arched aumbry with linenfold pattern door in the north chancel wall. The choir stalls date from 1401-19, with the name of John Curteys, rector during those years, appearing on one stall. They feature carved misericords and arm rests: two rows of four to the south and ten to the north. The 15th-century font is octagonal on a moulded base, with a restored cover displaying openwork panels with pinnacles and shields, fitted with a scrolled iron pulley bracket, one chain attached to the cover by a gadrooned globe finial.

The east window glass was created by Willement in 1861 and is of high quality. Among the monuments is a 13th-century tomb chest in the north transept with trelobed arcading and incised cross, set in a wall recess with roll and beaded hood mould. A hanging wall monument to Thomas Paramour (died 1621) occupies the north aisle, crafted of alabaster with black marble plaque and figures showing Thomas and his wife Mary kneeling opposite each other beneath an arcaded background. The monument features a frieze cornice and pediment on Corinthian columns supported by strapwork brackets.