Hoo

St Werburgh

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St Werburgh, Hoo
Image source: 1920s photograph: Private Collection

An architecturally interesting church despite poor quality nineteenth-century restorations. The tower is Norman with a fourteenth-century top and spire - with very clear pilaster buttresses and a round-headed window in its lower levels. The nave and aisle are thirteenth century in date with the usual round piers. In the chancel is a good example of a fifteenth-century sedilia, the three seats having two columns of polished Bethersden marble separating them. At either end of the hood mould are little monks' heads - possibly referring to the patronage of the church belonging to St Andrew's Priory, Rochester. There is also a good piscina incorporated into the composition. Unfortunately the nineteenth-century reredos, of seven much cusped and pinnacled panels, detracts from the medieval work and cuts across the base of the Perpendicular east window. The church was often used as a navigational aid by ships in the Medway and many monuments and memorials in church and churchyard are connected to seafarers or those who lost their lives at sea.

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