Christ Church

Christ Church is an Anglican parish church built in 1863–4 to designs by Gane of Trowbridge. It stands in East Kennett village centre on the north side of the street.

The church is constructed of diaper flint and sarsen stone with limestone buttresses and dressings. The roof is tiled (20th century except for 19th-century tiles to the porch). The building comprises a nave and chancel with a lateral tower on the north side. Windows include lancets throughout, a 3-light cusped east window, and a wheel-headed west window. The buttresses are decorated with nailhead ornament around their top offsets. The tower is two-staged with a north-west angle stair and carries a short spire with triangular pinnacles at the angles. The bell openings are two-light with colonnettes and ball-flower decoration to the outer arches. A Lombardic corbel table with corner colonnettes and dog-tooth eaves runs around the building. The porch has four-light openings along its sides and an open roof.

Inside, the nave spans 5 roof bays with plain ashlar walls and arched braced collar trusses springing from Corinthian corbels. The chancel arch has arris rolls on similar carved corbels with knotted tails to the bottom of short shafts; the hoodmouldings also bear carved terminals. The chancel has scissor rafters and archbraces with a pierced frieze above the wall plate and a heavy carved cornice below the east window.

All fittings are 19th-century: an octagonal font at the west end with sunk quatrefoiled panels; an oak pulpit with half-octagonal carved front; choir stalls with desk on columns; and an altar rail with table altar.

The church contains several monuments of note. In the chancel are two fine early 18th-century wall monuments in white, grey and coloured marbles. On the north side is a 1716 monument to Charles Tooker of East Kennett erected by Ann Saunders of Mingwel, featuring a panel with broken pediment and large bust wearing a cap against a grey marble pyramid, flanked by half urns and decorated with fluted brackets, putti and shield below. On the south side is a white tablet with triangular pediment to Ann Tooker (died 1707), featuring a draped urn, roundel with head in profile within a grey marble pyramid, and shield between brackets. In the nave on the north side is a white marble wall monument to Sir Charles Tooker (died 1700) with convex central panel, cornice and base between side panels, arms in baroque frame over urns, and fluted apron with drapes and flanking putti; also here are a mid-19th-century white marble tablet to Richard Mathews (died 1849) and a marble Great War memorial. On the south side is a 19th-century white marble tablet to Richard Mathews (died 1842 and descendants to 1882) and a limestone tablet to Richard Vigers (died 1947 and wife). At the west end are two 19th-century tablets with white marble scrolls on black ground: one to John Mathews of Spean (died 1879 and wife), the other to Elizabeth Fisher of Winterbourne, Newbury (died 1863 and husband). A painted metal commandments board hangs centrally at the west end. Over the south door is a framed Royal Arms on canvas dated 1781.