ST PETER AND ST PAUL. Flint. E.E. chancel, and gabled N chapel. E.E. S transept. Dec S windows in the S chapel. W tower and both aisles are Perp, the tower with short diagonal buttresses and a SE turret, but nothing grand about it. Perp N porch with a shafted entrance arch. The nave arcades, as so often, take us back to the C13. Piers alternately round and octagonal, and double-chamfered arches. Half the W bay was done away with when the tower was built (see a piece of nave walling attached to the N side of the tower). The transept however was added to the nave before there were aisles. And yet the arch from aisle to transept is of the earliest C13. Was it reset when the larger arch to the nave was put in? Two arches each to the N and S chapels, and an octagonal pier. In the S chapel a mutilated SEDILE and an early C14 tomb recess, with a cusped ogee arch running into the string-course in a way that shows that the chapel was built for this tomb. C14 chancel arch on crude head-corbels. The chancel E trio of lancets shafted inside. Crown-post roofs. The church was restored by St Aubyn in 1871. As usual with him, the fact is emphasized. - SCREENS. Simple Perp to N and S chapels - The rood screen is most interesting, because the enriched top to the blank panels has Renaissance details. It must have been installed only a very few years before it became obsolete. Four-centred openings of four ogeed lights with embattled transoms slanting through them, a local peculiarity. Shafts for a cove both sides. Modern top. - ARMOUR. Helm in the N chapel. - PLATE. Cup and Paten Cover, 1679 by D.G.; Flagon, 1776. BRASSES. John Best d. 1508. Extremely poorly engraved 15 1/2 in. figures. - Thomas Hawkins d. 1587, at the age of one hundred and one. Armoured figure, 34 in. long. - Elizabeth Driland d. 1591. 19 1/2 in. long. - MONUMENTS. Henry Petitt d. 1607. Tablet with reliefs of flowers in vases. - Thomas Hawkins d. 1617. Signed by Epiphanius Evesham. Reclining effigies in stone, carved with just a few personal touches, e.g. the bunchy plumes on the helmet, the handkerchief in his hands. The alabaster parts are more striking, the back-plate with a cartouche surrounded by trophies of armour, and especially the relief panels at the bottom, of Hawkins’s seven kneeling sons and six mourning daughters, slender, agitated figures, expressing their emotions in a way that was never normally represented in the early C17. - John Pettit d. 1630. Alabaster tablet with tiny kneeling figures. - Sir John Routh. Typical late CI7 tablet with the side scrolls on upside down. - Mary Knatchbull d. 1850. Like a C13 coffin slab with a foliated cross in relief.
BOUGHTON-UNDER-BLEAN. Just a street, but what a street! It lies between grassy banks, with trees and huge thatched barns and old cottages everywhere. The Tudor fronts are splendid. The black oast-houses come down into the street with a white windmill looking on. The church is far away among the fields; another windmill here is thought to be the broadest in Kent.
The Blean was a forest in Chaucer’s day, and is still richly timbered. The churchyard has a very fine yew, and from near it a group of ll oast-houses can be seen. Here, when we called, was the best example we have come upon of the strait and narrow way. It led out of the churchyard through a huge cornfield, a footpath straight as a
die, cut through the corn a few inches wide.
The 13th-century church, with a 15th-century tower, has two aisles and two chapels, and is a beautiful place. It has many carved stone faces and some fine monuments. Two 16th-century brasses are to John Best and his wife (1508) and to Cyriac and Florence Petit, with four daughters. On a wall is one of the smallest sculptures ever seen, with John Pettit, household servant to Queen Elizabeth, kneeling with his wife at a desk. They are eight inches high.
But it is for another piece of sculpture that every lover of English art comes here, a monument set up in the year Shakespeare died by a man whose name shines in English sculpture with something of Shakespeare’s lustre in English poetry, for it is the work of Epiphanius Evesham, our first known great sculptor, and is one of the two best examples we have of his work in Kent. Hythe and Mersham have tablets, and Lynsted has two other groups like these; they are the best of all, but these at Boughton are tmly wonderful.
They show Sir Thomas Hawkins and his wife on an altar tomb, stately alabaster figures. He is in armour, his helmet hanging above him. Below on the front of the tomb are two sculptured panels of seven sons and six daughters. The two panels are a veritable museum piece of sculpture, with an almost incredibly small figure of a baby in a cradle. One of the daughters has a handkerchief to her eyes as in the group at Lynsted. One of the sons holds a ball, and a small boy holds a skull. The faces are all lifelike, and the carving is of great delicacy.
Close by sleeps the John Hawkins who saved the family from ruin in Cromwell’s day, and on the floor of the chapel is a brass to Thomas’s remarkable father Thomas. He lived to be 101, and two pompous verses, engraved in brass in 1587, tell us that he was high and long and strong, excelling all that lived in his age. Another stone has another curious boast:
Marbles shall fade; George Farwell’s name shall not;
Such in the Book of Life by God are wrot.
It has kept his name alive since 1747, and we pass it on. Fitting that in this small place of great boasting a bell should say:
Although I am but light and small
I will be heard above you all.
The Blean was a forest in Chaucer’s day, and is still richly timbered. The churchyard has a very fine yew, and from near it a group of ll oast-houses can be seen. Here, when we called, was the best example we have come upon of the strait and narrow way. It led out of the churchyard through a huge cornfield, a footpath straight as a
die, cut through the corn a few inches wide.
The 13th-century church, with a 15th-century tower, has two aisles and two chapels, and is a beautiful place. It has many carved stone faces and some fine monuments. Two 16th-century brasses are to John Best and his wife (1508) and to Cyriac and Florence Petit, with four daughters. On a wall is one of the smallest sculptures ever seen, with John Pettit, household servant to Queen Elizabeth, kneeling with his wife at a desk. They are eight inches high.
But it is for another piece of sculpture that every lover of English art comes here, a monument set up in the year Shakespeare died by a man whose name shines in English sculpture with something of Shakespeare’s lustre in English poetry, for it is the work of Epiphanius Evesham, our first known great sculptor, and is one of the two best examples we have of his work in Kent. Hythe and Mersham have tablets, and Lynsted has two other groups like these; they are the best of all, but these at Boughton are tmly wonderful.
They show Sir Thomas Hawkins and his wife on an altar tomb, stately alabaster figures. He is in armour, his helmet hanging above him. Below on the front of the tomb are two sculptured panels of seven sons and six daughters. The two panels are a veritable museum piece of sculpture, with an almost incredibly small figure of a baby in a cradle. One of the daughters has a handkerchief to her eyes as in the group at Lynsted. One of the sons holds a ball, and a small boy holds a skull. The faces are all lifelike, and the carving is of great delicacy.
Close by sleeps the John Hawkins who saved the family from ruin in Cromwell’s day, and on the floor of the chapel is a brass to Thomas’s remarkable father Thomas. He lived to be 101, and two pompous verses, engraved in brass in 1587, tell us that he was high and long and strong, excelling all that lived in his age. Another stone has another curious boast:
Marbles shall fade; George Farwell’s name shall not;
Such in the Book of Life by God are wrot.
It has kept his name alive since 1747, and we pass it on. Fitting that in this small place of great boasting a bell should say:
Although I am but light and small
I will be heard above you all.
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