The cathedral of Romney Marsh

For Lent we’ve a special series looking at the history of churches on the Romney Marsh. Last week we featured the most iconic – St Thomas Becket at Fairfield. This week it’s the first part of two articles on one of the biggest.

Romney Marsh is a veritable treasure trove for admirers of medieval churches; 14 have survived while there are ruins of four more. Of the 14 still extant, one is large enough to be known as the Cathedral of Romney Marsh, the church of St George at Ivychurch. St George only became patron saint of England during the reign of King Edward III in 1348, which makes the church at Ivychurch one of the first in the country with that dedication, as building began in about 1360. An earlier name for the church was the Church on the Isle in the Waters, perhaps showing just how the area has changed since the marsh was drained.

St George’s is a very large church but historically the population it serves has always been small, currently the number is somewhat fewer than 200, although the parish itself is very large, and its shape still follows the tracts of land that have been drained since the 12th century, when Walland Marsh was being reclaimed from the Channel. The new land seems to have been left largely unsettled, probably because of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century. Writing in a newspaper article in 1933, the rector, George Hewitt, tells us that, “This morning the congregation consisted of one woman and she does not belong to my parish. The number is often not more than three and there have been occasions when there have been none at all.”

So why, one might ask, would such a tiny place need such a big church? The answer, of course, is simple; it didn’t. The size of the church is a reflection of the status of its commissioner, Simon Islip, lord archbishop of Canterbury, on whose land it was built. It is more than likely that the church was built, at least in part, by stonemasons from Canterbury Cathedral, as is evidenced by the now blocked clerestory windows, which are a copy of those in the south aisle of the cathedral.

The church is built largely from good Kentish ragstone, but at the east end there are traces of an earlier church on the site, which was evidently built of stone from Caen in Normandy, so it was probably built some time after 1066. To support this, during work in 2006, a piece of Caen stone was found in one of the blocked windows. It had been used as rubble infilling, and was carved with a chevron moulding, typical of the period between 1100 –1150. There is also a graffiti etched Caen pier near the south door. Three more Caen columns have survived the loss of the original church in the northeast corner. There is a list of all the incumbents’ names, dating from 1286, although we know that the first rector was installed in 1242. We know also that in 1848 the rectory and its glebe land were valued at £44 16 shillings and eight pence, producing an income for the rector of £405. His total parish numbered just 180 people.

The tower, built in the Perpendicular style, and the west end of the church were added some time in the 15th century. The tower stands 28 metres tall, and is topped with a turret to use for a beacon when needed. The tower was originally not attached to the main body of the church, which was not unusual for a bell tower. It has been massively buttressed to stop it from descending into the boggy ground. We know that in 1455 William Warde left the large sum of £2 for the express purpose of purchasing new bells. That would be something in excess of £200 now. Probably not many church bells could be bought for that these days! We know that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry charged £10 for a bell during the late 16th century, and that was described as large. There was a ring of four bells in 1552, recast into five by John Wilnar in 1624. The bells have been silent since 1972. The clock in the turret was made by the well-known Clerkenwell firm of John Moore and Sons in 1826. This we know was a replacement because in 1799 the Kentish antiquarian Edward Hasted wrote of St George’s that it was, “a large handsome building of sandstone, consisting of three aisles and a chancel, none of which are ceiled, having at the west end a tower steeple with a beacon turret. In the tower there are five bells and a clock.”

The window in the tower is rather interesting, because it is earlier in date than the tower in which it is set. Its style, known as Decorated Gothic, was in vogue 100 or so years before the Perpendicular Gothic of the tower. During restoration work in 2017 it became apparent that the window was very well set, with no indication of it being reused from an earlier building. Perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps someone in authority just liked the earlier style.

Within the church is a fine octagonal font, dating from the late 15th century and made of Kentish ragstone. A large amount of interior woodwork, which includes the carved choir stalls dates from the same period and seems to have been made by local craftsmen.

The porch was where the first school in the village used to meet, with the rector as its master. It was traditionally where the first part of a marriage service was performed and, in the days when often just the priest could read and write, wills were signed and witnessed there. There is a small room called a parvis chamber above the porch. It was where itinerant priests stayed for the night before saying mass. It most probably where valuables were kept – the communion silver for example, and the parish records books. It became an emergency food store between 1939-45, with the local home guard on patrol atop the tower.

The church was of course originally a Roman Catholic foundation, decorated with wall paintings, images of St Mary and other saints, crucifixes and beautifully decorated stained glass windows. During the Protestant Reformation from about 1530, such things were seen as idolatrous, and enthusiastically destroyed. Wall paintings were limewashed over, windows and statues smashed. Some fragments of the pre-Reformation glass have been preserved and there is a rare survival, a stoop for holy water, just inside the south door. There is another survival in St Katherine’s chapel, one which perfectly illustrates the old saying that “the weakest go to the wall”. It was a standard practice in the middle ages that the congregation would stand during mass. Not everyone could stand for the whole time, especially the older congregants, and so for their use there was a narrow stone bench that they could perch on, built out from, in this case, the south wall.

Next week in part two, we’ll be heading inside St George at Ivychurch.

Image Credits: Geograph https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ivychurch,_St._George%27s_Church_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4646332.jpg CC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.