| CHURCH
of ENGLAND The Deanery consists of a family 23 Parish Churches within the Diocese of Canterbury We hope that this website will help you discover and enjoy our community |
Beware! thieves are targeting churches in this area to steal lead, copper and Kent peg tiles
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Warning Many of the local churches are being hit by lead and copper thefts Kent Peg Tiles are once more at risk. Both Kingsnorth and Kennington Churches have had hundreds of tiles stolen. Currently each good tile is worth over £1. |
Ashford
Link and Deanery Youth News
Ashford Link and Youth News are the quarterly newsletters of the Ashford C/E Deanery
To
view the current issue or a back copy, click on the edition shown below
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Kingsnorth
Church 1000 Years Old
| Work
to restore and refurbish Kingsnorth Church has revealed two much older churches
on the site. Revd Sheila McLachlan parish priest says, "We were excited to discover one week the outline foundation for a structure to the south side of the current Church. But just days later archeologists realised that there was an even older medieval building adjacent to the north wall of the current church. We are now looking at the real possibility of a church being on the site for at least 1000 years." |  |
Below
are some interesting facts about Brabourne Church
| The
armorial shields commemorate members of the Scott family who lived in Brabourne
or neighbouring Smeeth between 1290 and 1594. The Scotts were an eminent family
in Kent during that period, and held many important offices of state under the
King or Queen of the time. The sculpture was completed in c.1610, the heyday of
the family fame. Sadly, the proven family line is now extinct. The main role of the altar-tomb is obscure. It is empty, so it is more a family cenotaph than a tomb. Or it may have been installed as a memorial to Sir Thomas Scott (d 1594), using the space made available when a wooden altar standing a short distance away from the wall was introduced. Another possibility is that it is a memorial to Reginald Scott (d 1599), the author of two important books about witchcraft and hop culture. The table-top of this tomb is marble from Bethersden (West of Ashford). The quotations are from the Great Bible of 1539 and the Geneva Bible of 1560, the work dating from well before the introduction of the King James Bible or other translations. |  |
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The window is in the
Chapel of the Holy Trinity, but is now called the Scott Chapel. It dates from
1420. Turn left and look up left through the Chancel and you can see on the other
side a narrow stained glass window. You will read that it is a relic of a 12th
century window. This is very special. Many windows in old English churches were purposely smashed during the times of either Henry VIII or Cromwell, but this one escaped. It was also left undisturbed when other stained glass from the Brabourne windows was sold in 1774. It was restored in Victorian times, but using the original glass, and it is believed to be England's oldest complete Norman window still in its original setting with light falling through. Although both Canterbury and York Cathedrals have Norman glass windows, theirs are not complete with their own glass in the original setting. It is claimed that there is only one older similar window in Europe - at the church of St. Dennise in Paris. |
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into the Tower. You will see the big ladder up to the bell chamber. This is very
rare, and on account of its size and age is almost unique in England. The ladder
is constructed from one long length of oak tree-trunk, split in two, with the
30 treads cut from smaller branches in triangular section and kept in place with
wooden pegs. The ladder is supported in the fork of another branch, and at the
base the whole structure is enclosed against the wall by another, curved, branch.
All the wood originally used is from one tree. The wood of this ladder has not been dated scientifically, but presumably it was constructed at the same time as the tower itself, during the first half of the 1100s. The tree must surely have been at least 200 years old when it was felled and so would have been growing in about 800 A.D., when Kent last had its own King. The ladder is basically original, but damage caused by deathwatch beetle made it necessary for many of the treads to be replaced in 1936. For the same reason major repairs to the roof of the tower were necessary in 1980 |  |
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