We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

St Mary, Luddenham, Kent

Location
Luddenham, UK (51°20′19″N, 0°51′9″E)
Luddenham
TQ992631
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Kent
now Kent
medieval St Mary
now St Mary
  • Toby Huitson
  • Mary Berg
2012

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=1456.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Feature Sets
Description

This is a church in an isolated farm setting NW of Faversham. Essentially a twin-cell building comprising a Romanesque core with a 13thc chancel, it contains evidence of many later alterations, not least due to the collapse of the N tower in 1806 and its sympathetic rebuilding at the W end of the nave in brick, complete with pointed windows and crenellations. As Tim Tatton-Brown has observed, the north and south walls of the west end of the nave must incorporate 12th-c fabric (including some re-used Roman brick). The only Romanesque sculpture is in the W doorway.

History

The church was granted by William of Luddenham to the Cluniac abbey of Faversham in the late 12thc, but this was challenged in the early 13thc and appears to have resulted in the abbey's loss of the church, in return for a yearly pension from a local lay lord (Hasted 1798, vi. 398).

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Comments/Opinions

The church has been redundant since 1972; it is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust.

Bibliography

F. Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, or England's patron saints, London, 1899,190.

S. Glynne, The Churches of Kent, London, 1877, 195-6.

E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2nd edn, 12 vols in 13 parts (1797--1801).

P. Reid, ‘The Lost Tower of Luddenham’, online at http://www.community-archaeology.org.uk/projects/Luddenham/KP82.pdf Nov 2011. (Resistivity survey and excavation of tower foundations by the Faversham Society Archaeological Research Group).

T. Tatton-Brown, 'St Mary Church, Luddenham', survey for the Kent Archaeological Society, at https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/01/03/LUD.htm (accessed April 2021).