As the guidebook says, this is a much mutilated church! It is of late Norman origins, but rebuildings in the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries have left a church that is neither pretty nor inviting. The interior, however, offers the more experienced church-crawler a wealth of detail. The late Norman work may have been done by the same masons who worked at Rochester Cathedral as their masons' marks are identical. The fourteenth-century rebuilding took place as a result of earthquake damage of 1382 (see also Hollingbourne) when the nave collapsed. The work resulted in the demolition of the aisles and the patching up of the chancel. In the early nineteenth century the central tower was rebuilt and the chancel shortened to bring the altar nearer the nave. There is a series of good eighteenth-century wall tablets to the Bathurst family, and two memorial brasses. It may not be the loveliest church in Kent, but it is much loved and deserves more visitors.
