KENTISH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING
STONES
BERNA RD C. WORSSA M and TIM TATTON-BROWN
The name Kentish Rag, or Ragstone, suggests a building stone suitable
only for rough walling purposes, a view expressed, for example, by
Howe (1910, 264), who wrote of Kentish Rag: 'It has been extensively
used in churches in the Home Counties in the form of random and
coursed work; it cannot be dressed . . .' From earlier periods than
Rowe's time of writing there are, however, many examples of dressed
stonework as well as of ashlar and window tracery in Kentish Rag. It is
one purpose of this paper to draw attention to the varied ways in which
the stone has been used from time to time.
Kentish Rag varies in lithology along its outcrop, such that it is
possible in the case of many buildings to deduce the location from
which their stone has been derived. Certain Middlesex churches
(Robinson and Worssam 1990) provide instances. The paper, therefore,
starts with an account of the geology of Kentish Rag. Descriptions are
also included of three types of stone with some resemblance to Kentish
Rag: the well-known Reigate stone, from Surrey; Folkestone stone,
which is rarely recognised as a building stone; and Thanet Beds
sandstone from east Kent, so little regarded that it has no familiar local
name.
THE GEOLOGY OF KENTISH BUILDING STONES
Kentish Rag occurs in the Hythe Beds formation, which is part of the
Lower Greensand, a group of formations of Lower Cretaceous age (see
Table 1). The ragstone is a hard sandy limestone, consisting of rounded
detrital grains of quartz and of the green mineral glauconite, cemented
by calcite (a crystalline form of calcium carbonate). Analyses of the
rock show around 85 per cent CaCO3. The ragstone occurs in layers
from 0.10 m. up to about 0.90 m. thick, interbedded with layers of
hassock, a loamy, calcareous, glauconitic sand. Such alternation, to a
93
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
total thickness, depending on locality, of about 10 to 40 m., makes up
the Hythe Beds formation in Kent, almost to the Surrey border. Farther
west, and throughout Surrey, the Hythe Beds consist of non-calcareous
sandstones. Ragstone and hassock occur in the Hythe Beds in Sussex
from Pulborough eastwards to near Ditchling (see White 1924), but the
stone there is thought to have been used only locally for building.
Within both rag and hassock can occur layers of chert, a very hard,
splintery stone, grey when fresh, and brownish-grey when weathered. It
resembles flint in being composed essentially of silica.
In buildings, particularly in west Kent and in the London area,
Kentish Rag is perhaps most likely to be confused with Reigate stone.
Both are grey and finely glauconitic. But whereas Kentish Rag is from
the Lower Greensand, Reigate stone comes from the Upper Greensand
formation of Surrey. It is only slightly, or not at all, calcareous, is
composed largely of particles of amorphous silica and is slightly
micaceous. The absence of rounded quartz grains and the presence of
scattered mica flakes serve to distinguish it from Kentish Rag (these
features are best observed using a hand lens). Weathered blocks of
Reigate stone commonly show a dished surface, as of stone softer than
its mortar joints; those of Kentish Rag, on the other hand, tend to flake
around their edges and so develop a convex profile.
In east Kent the sands of the Folkestone Beds formation, within the
Lower Greensand, include, from the coast inland for some 10 km. as
far as Stanford, beds of a hard, grey, glauconitic calcareous sandstone,
much of it gritty to pebbly (i.e. including rounded quartz grains of
2 mm. up to 5 mm. in diameter, and easily visible to the naked eye),
and some of it cherty. The stone superficially resembles Kentish Rag,
but is more sandy. In historical records the term 'Folkestone stone' may
include both Folkestone Beds sandstone and Kentish Rag, for both
were won from foreshore outcrops in the manor of Folkestone, between
Folkestone harbour and Sandgate. It is recommended that the term
Folkestone stone now be used only for stone derived from the
Folkestone Beds.
A third type of stone that may be mistaken for Kentish Rag is palegrey,
fine-grained calcareous sandstone from the Thanet Beds
formation. Geologically this is restricted to east Kent eastwards of
Faversham. It is rarely exposed inland, but crops out as lines of ovoid
round masses or daggers, up to about 0.30 m. thick, in the sands that
form cliffs between Herne Bay and Reculver (Holmes 1981) and on the
north side of Pegwell Bay. At both places blocks of the stone litter the
foreshore. Another outcrop is on the river-cliff, now overgrown,
forming the east side of Richborough Castle. The stone is finely
glauconitic. It differs from Reigate stone in that it contains quartz
grains. Its essential difference from Kentish Rag is that it tends to be
94
KENTISH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
laminated, such that, when weathered, the stone splits along flat
bedding planes 1 cm. or less apart.
DETAILED GEOLOGY OF KENTISH RAG
The outcrop of the Hythe Beds in Kent (Fig. 1) forms a south-facing
escarpment, the Chartland ( of Everitt 1986), extending from the coast
at Sandgate westwards via Ashford, Maidstone and Sevenoaks. This
tract of high relief comprises three sectors, each characterised by strata
of different type.
The first sector extends from Sandgate to near Boughton Malherbe.
The outcrop, though attaining 110 m. (350 ft.) O.D. at Lympne and
Pluckley, forms mostly but a low range of hills, and the scarp crest
follows a sinuous course. The port of Hythe, until blocked by shingle in
the sixteenth century, would have been well placed to ship ragstone
from quarries above the town.
In the second sector, from Boughton Malherbe to near Mereworth,
the scarp crest takes on a straight course a little north of west, with a
height around 120 m. (400 ft.) O.D. This sector, centred on Maidstone,
with the River Medway traversing it and facilitating transport of stone,
has always been important for quarrying. In the third sector, from
Mereworth to near Westerham, and centred on Sevenoaks, the scarp
crest is still a well-marked feature, and behind it is a tract of varied
relief, including one of the highest summits of the Weald, of 240 m.
(800 ft.) O.D. at Toys Hill.
In the middle sector the Hythe Beds succession is known in detail.
Until the 1950s Maidstone quarrymen had names for most of the
ragstone beds. They also had their own word, 'lane', for bed in the
geological sense. With increasing mechanisation the use of bed names
has died out in the quarries, but the names, recorded in the Maidstone
Memoir (Worssam 1963), remain of value as a basis for geological
correlation. The succession can be summarised as consisting of a lower
part, up to a bed of cherty limestone known as the Flint (see Fig. 2), in
which rag and hassock beds are well defined and constant in thickness
and maintain their individual characters over wide areas; and of an
upper part in which ragstone beds are more uniform in lithology, but
tend to be discontinuous, and to include seams and lenses of chert.
The names given to beds differed slightly from quarry to quarry, and
more so between two main groups of quarries, those around Maidstone
and those at Boughton Quarries, a hamlet south by east of Maidstone.
Some are quite descriptive. Thus, in the 1950s at Coombe Quarry, just
south of Maidstone, a hassock underlying the Flint lane, and in which
ragstone occurs only as lenticular masses or doggers, was known as the
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BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
PLATE I
(Brirish Geological Survey phorograph A88/6).
Quarry 275 m. north of Brishing Court, Boughton Quarries, in 1952.
Chance, and below that in turn came the White, a light-coloured
limestone, and the Coalman, a dark grey limestone said to have derived
its name from lines of dark brown charcoal-like spots, actually soft
phosphatic nodules, in the hassocks above and below it. At Boughton
Quarries, the Flint was known as the Coalman and the Chance seems to
have died out, while a light-coloured limestone equivalent to the White
was known as the Ragstone, and the equivalent of Combe Quarry's
Coalman was the Newington.
That these Boughton names are of some antiquity is shown by the
close resemblance of those in use in 1950, in a quarry 275 m.
(300 yds.) north of Brishing Court (Worssam 1963, 39), to those in two
nineteenth-century accounts, one anonymous ( 1839), the other by John
Whichcord junior ( 1846) (see Plate I and Table 2). The latter author,
himself an architect, was the son of John Whichcord, a successful
Maidstone architect. Whichcord ( I 846) described the Whiteland Bridge
as one of the best beds in the quarries. A free-working bed, I 4 in. thick,
blocks of it 12 ft. long could be obtained 'of almost any width required,
as the fissures in the regular beds usually arrange themselves in
squares; forming, as it were, so many tables of stone. ..'. While the
98
KENTISH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
principal beds worked in the 1839 and 1846 quarries must have been
the same as those seen in 1950, one has an impression that the 1839 list
is from a quarry that went rather deeper than that of 1846, while the
1950 quarry went a little higher in the succession than the earlier ones.
The transition from the strata that make up the succession near
Maidstone to those to the west is brought by the upper beds of the
formation becoming increasingly sandy (see Fig. 2). A large quarry at
Borough Green, near lghtham, formerly showed (Worssam 1970) in the
upper half of its face many beds of coarsely sandy to gritty ragstone,
some including glauconite grains of 2 mm. diameter. Finer-grained
limestones, like those so well developed near Maidstone, were to be
seen only near the bottom of the face.
From lghtham westwards beyond Sevenoaks (Dines et al. 1969)
chert occurs at the top of the Hythe Beds, in layers up to 0.30 m. thick,
forming a unit up to 4 to 5 m. thick known as the Sevenoaks Stone. The
presence of this very hard rock probably accounts in part for the high
relief of the escarpment thereabouts. Of the many quarries that must
once have existed around Sevenoaks only one remains, at Dryhill, near
Sundridge, preserved as a County Council picnic site. The Sevenoaks
Stone is there 2.40 m. thick. Below it a little chert occurs in some
finely sandy rag and hassock beds, while the lowest beds exposed are
of coarsely sandy to gritty ragstone and hassock.
Ragstone is not recorded west of Brasted. Stone formerly quarried in
the vicinity of Westerham, near Hosey Hill and Limpsfield Common
(Dines et al. 1969, 68), is a yellowish sandstone with more resemblance
to Hythe Beds sandstones near Pulborough and Midhurst in west
Sussex than to Kentish Rag.
The boundary between the Hythe Beds succession in the Maidstone
area and that in the easternmost sector of the Hythe Beds outcrop is
taken at the top of the 'Exogyra' Bed (Fig. 2), a whitish sandy or gritty
limestone crowded with shells of a small variety of the oyster-like
'Exogyra', a fossil now known as Aetostreon. This bed may have been
that at the very bottom of the Boughton quarries as seen by Whichcord
(1846), and termed by him White Rag - 'useless, tumbles to pieces on
exposure to the air'. In recent years, the quarries have shown it just
below a distinctive dark grey limestone, the Black Jack, itself the
lowest well-marked Hythe Beds limestone immediately west of
Maidstone. Eastwards from Maidstone, the 'Exogyra' Bed rises higher
in the succession, until at Little Chart and at the Goldwell quarry, near
Great Chart, it occurs near the top of the Hythe Beds, with beneath it
quite different rag and hassock strata from those near Maidstone. These
beds persist eastwards to the coast. They include no chert, and the
ragstone beds are mostly fine-grained and of a pale grey colour, with
little difference in texture from one bed to the next. Bed names, such as
99
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
Square Rock and Little Diamonds, were found to be in use in one
quarry in the 1950s, at Chilmington Green, but no bed sufficiently
distinguishable to be traced for any distance could be recognised.
Within some of the limestones occur the shells of fossil brachiopods -
Sellithyris sella and Sulchirhynchia hythensis, commonly in small
clusters or 'nests'. At the top of the succession from Sellindge
eastwards to Hythe, where they are best developed (Smart et al. 1966,
52), occur one or more beds of a dark green, hard and tough glauconitic
limestone.
An account of the fossils of the Hythe Beds was given by Casey
(1961). Shells are most common in the hassock beds. They are sparse
in ragstone of the western and central sectors of the outcrop. Most often
to be seen in building stone from those parts of Kent are cross-sections
of large shells, some 150 mm. across, of Aetostreon. Trace-fossils,
notably infilled burrows 10 to 20 mm. or so in diameter, show up on
some weathered surfaces, of stone from all parts of the outcrop.
Summary of Geology
The lateral variation in stone type of the Hythe Beds of Kent is shown
diagrammatically in Fig. 2. To summarise the main features of Kentish
Rag as seen in buildings:
(1) Stone from the westernmost part of the outcrop is likely to be
coarsely sandy or gritty, with glauconite grains up to 2 mm. in
diameter, and to include patches of chert; this stone, used in and
around Sevenoaks, tends to develop a greenish-brown colour on
weathering;
(2) Ragstone from the Maidstone area is generally of a medium grey
colour; it may include chert, but coarse sand grains are absent
(their most easterly occurrence is in a quarry at Ditton); small
brown phosphatic nodules occur in some beds; particularly good
stone, in large blocks, came from Boughton Quarries;
(3) Stone from the easternmost part of the outcrop should be
recognisable by its pale grey colour and absence of coarse sand
grains and of chert, and particularly by the presence in it of
brachiopod shells - seen in cross-ection these are ovoid and about
20 mm. in length.; the dark green sandy limestone from the
Sellindge to Hythe vicinity is quite distinctive.
In east Kent buildings, grey, coarse to gritty stone with patches of
chert is likely to be Folkestone stone. It will be noted that some ragstone
from the Sevenoaks area answers to the same description. Both,
probably because of the abundance of glauconite, tend to weather to a
100
KENTISH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
brownish colour, though no Kentish Rag has the conspicuous quartz
pebbles seen in some Folkestone stone. The two types of stone seem to
have been used mainly in the vicinity of their respective outcrops: if,
however, they were exported on any scale to more distant locations, say
Essex or Hertfordshire, they might be difficult to tell apart.
QUARRYING PRACTICE
Kentish Rag is worked in open quarries, some of which in recent years,
worked for roadstone, have been very large. The hassock is largely a
waste material, back-filled into worked-out parts of the quarries. Near
Maidstone, at Willington (Worssam 1963, 38) and on the south side of
Mote Park, are some small stone mines, of probable nineteenth-century
date, made by driving horizontal galleries into steep valley sides, but
these are exceptional.
According to W hichcord (1846) some hassock beds provided
building stone. The only such use of hassock known to the writers is
for walling of a farm outbuilding, rather derelict in 1989, beside the
lane through Boughton Quarries hamlet. The stone, in squared blocks,
includes some phosphatic nodules, and could be Whichcord's 'Best
Hassock', from just above the Newington lane.
The existence of quite deep quarries near Maidstone in Roman times
is suggested by hassock from a 1988 excavation in Lothbury in the City
of London. The stone, which came from the foundations of a secondcentury
town house (information from Dr P. Rowsome, of the Museum
of London), contains numerous fossils including crushed Trigoniids,
and is of a type found only immediately above the Black Jack,
normally the lowest ragstone bed of Maidstone quarries.
The Museum of London has on display part of a sailing barge that
was wrecked at Blackfriars in the second century A.O. with part of its
Kentish Rag cargo intact (Marsden 1967). Borings by the brackish to
marine worm Teredo in the barge planking could have been acquired in
the Thames estuary on voyages between Maidstone and London.
It is borings into the ragstone itself that have provided an unexpected
insight into past quarrying practice. In 1990, one of us (T.W.T. T-B.)
noticed that some blocks of Kentish Rag in the quoins of the late
twelfth-century tower of St. Nicholas's Hospital chapel at Harbledown,
3 km. west of Canterbury, show recent marine bivalve borings, some
enclosing intact shells. Since then, similar borings have been noted in
quoins of the thirteenth-century chancel of Paddlesworth church, near
Folkestone, and in Kentish Rag stonework of the late fourteenthcentury
rebuilding of the Poor Priests' Hospital in Stour Street,
Canterbury, as well as at other places.
101
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
On being shown shells extracted from borings at the Harbledown
chapel, Dr J. Taylor, of the British Museum (Natural History), London,
identified them as Hiatella arctica (Linnaeus). Some of the stones at
Harbledown and the Poor Priests' Hospital bear slot-like incisions
about 2 mm. long, recognised by Dr Taylor as bored by the Polychaete
worm, Polydora. These stones must, therefore, have been quarried from
a foreshore, the only possible location for which is where the Hythe
Beds outcrop comes down to sea level, from Sandgate eastwards to
within 1 km. or so of Folkestone. The type of stone used in the
buildings cited, a light grey limestone with brachiopods, is what would
be expected at Sandgate. The beds are exposed at low tide, forming a
wave-cut platform at the foot of the shingle beach. A visit to the
outcrop in February 1992 confirmed the presence, in loose boulders of
Kentish Rag, of borings containing Hiatella shells, and also of
Polydora borings.
These observations throw light on historical accounts that imply
large-scale foreshore quarrying in the Folkestone vicinity, while
buildings referred to in the accounts show that it was not only the
Hythe Beds outcrop that was worked (for Kentish Rag) but also that of
the Folkestone Beds, in the area of what is now Folkestone Harbour,
for Folkestone stone. Thus, there was quarrying at Folkestone in the
early thirteenth century for stone for Dover Castle, and in 1362-65 for
a new castle (Queenborough, now demolished) at Sheppey (Salzman
1952, 128-9). At Dover Castle, brown-weathered, gritty Folkestone
stone predominates in thirteenth-century walls, and some of the blocks,
in the facing of the Colton Tower and the Constable's Tower, show
mollusc borings. Light grey Kentish Rag limestone occurs in minor
proportion.
Foreshore quarrying is described in an account of the building of
Sandgate Castle (Rutton 1893), where in 1539 men were engaged 'in
carrying stone, not only in lading of carts but also wading in the water
for to lade the boats, giving attendance on the tides, and waiting on the
carts'. The walls of the castle are as much of Folkestone stone as of
Kentish Rag. Some Kentish Rag blocks in the rubble core of brokendown
parts of the walls are certainly beach-boulders, riddled with
mollusc borings.
The construction of Dover Harbour in the sixteenth century, of which
a graphic account has been provided by Martin Biddle (1982), involved
the transport of large quantities of stone from the Folkestone foreshore.
In about 1535, 'huge stones as laie on the shore, neere the low
watermark (where the quarrie or mine of those rocks is)' were attached
by chains to large barrels, which, floating as the tide rose, lifted the
stones so that they could be towed by small boats to Dover - a device
that so pleased Henry VIII that he awarded a pension to the Dover
102
KENTISH RAG A ND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
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towers north of Burgate. The recently-excavated semi-circular tower at
16 Pound Lane (Tatton-Brown 1977) and the plinths at la Pound Lane
(Anderson 1989) and of St. George's Gate (Bennett and Houliston
1989; Tatton-Brown 1989) showed a very high quality cut and tooled
ashlar, that at St. George's Gate (Plates IV and V) recorded as coming
from Maidstone in 1483, imported through Whitstable. Ashlar and
'ornell' supplied to Sandwich in 1463 may have been for the town
gates there.
Sixteenth century
Church-tower building and enlargement of churches continued into the
pre-Reformation years of the sixteenth century. The tower of St. Mary
Magdalen in Canterbury was rebuilt in c. 1503, its street frontage (to
the north) faced with ragstone ashlar. The stone is in blocks up to
1.10 m. long, much like those used for the Cathedral buttresses over a
century earlier, though on this fairly small tower they look over-sized.
The south aisle of Otford church (1520-30) has walls of ragstone
blocks, some with conspicuous coarse glauconite grains and cherty
patches that indicate derivation from nearby Sevenoaks. Some very
large blocks, irregularly shaped and 0.50 m. or more across, are
apparently face-bedded, but seem not to have suffered unduly from
weathering as a result.
In London some fine ragstone ashlar was used for the great
gatehouse of St. John's Priory in Clerkenwell, built in 1504. The stone
is of a grey colour, and looked at closely is seen to be sprinkled with
fine (0.20 mm. diameter) glauconite grains. Conspicuous in the lower
stage of the gatehouse are large blocks of this stone, of similar
dimensions to those used for the St. Mary Magdalen tower in
Canterbury. Ragstone in similar large blocks is to be seen in the crypt
of St. Bride, Fleet Street. The stone there was re-used by Sir
Christopher Wren, after the destruction of the medieval church in the
Great Fire of 1666, for a foundation wall on the east side of his new
steeple. It was brought to light by archaeological excavation after the
second gutting of the church in a 1940 air raid (Grimes 1968). The
stone can be presumed to have been part of a late medieval tower, the
position and date of which (Gustav Milne, personal communication,
January 1993) are still matters of conjecture.
On the north side of Charterhouse Square, an outer wall and gateway,
both probably of sixteenth-century date, remain of the London
Charterhouse. The gateway is a four-centred arch of finely wrought
Kentish R a g ashlar. The wall has a bold chequerwork facing,
comprising 45 cm. (1 ft. 6 in.) squares alternately of coursed ragstone
blocks and knapped flints. The ragstone contains many chert bands. It
115
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
probably came from Maidstone, and would have been suitable only for
walling.
The Folkestone stone and Kentish Rag of Sandgate Castle, built in
1539-40, have been mentioned on an earlier page. The walls of the
castle also include scattered squared blocks of re-used Caen stone, from
St. Radigund's Abbey and elsewhere (Rutton 1893). The contemporary
Deal Castle has walls faced with squared blocks of Folkestone stone,
Kentish Rag and re-used Caen stone, roughly in proportions of 70, 20
and 10 per cent. Some of the Folkestone stone and Kentish Rag blocks
show mollusc borings.
A later fortification, its stonework almost wholly Kentish Rag, was
Upnor Castle, on the River Medway, built in 1559-67 and enlarged in
1599-1601. Some ashlar came from Boughton, but much of the stone
for the castle came from the demolition of parts of Rochester Castle
(Saunders 1985).
Fordwich Town Hall, built shortly before 1544, is notable for its
timber framing; its ground floor, originally open, is now walled in, in
part with large squared blocks of Folkestone stone.
Seventeenth century
The seventeenth century must have seen a great decline in demand for
Kentish Rag. Brick was in fashion for domestic architecture, while
Portland stone came into use for public buildings in London. A minor
use was for gravestones - Otford church has some large Kentish Rag
ledger stones dated 1625, 1626 and 1635, and smaller ones of 1705 and
1715, but Portland stone, introduced there in 1697, replaced Kentish
Rag in the eighteenth century.
Sackete (1716) recorded that stone quarried on the Folkestone
foreshore had been shipped to Dunki r k in the time of the
Commonwealth for harbour works, and that stone from the same source
had been used, nearer his time of writing, for Dover pier and other pier
heads.
Eighteenth century
Some eighteenth-century ragstone masonry displays a high level of
skill. An instance is Sevenoaks School, built in 1724-34 to the designs
of Lord Burlington. The walling stones, in smallish blocks, with joints
galleted, have flat, slightly roughened surfaces, but an ashlar finish was
given to door and window surrounds and other architectural details.
Chert patches and scattered coarse glauconite grains in some of the
stone indicate an origin in nearby quarries.
Another distinguished Kentish Rag building is Mereworth church
116
--.J
PLATE VI
lialiiilll".- F r t .a. Nd
(Bernard Worssam)
The Manor House, High Street, Sevenoaks. of about 1800. The front elevation is of Kentish Rag ashlar.
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(Newman 1980, 421), one of the few eighteenth-century churches in
Kent, of 17 44-46. Its architect is unknown. The western or entrance
side and the north wall of the church, facing the public highway, are of
Kentish Rag ashlar blocks 7 to 8 in. in height, giving two courses to
each of the large Tunbridge Wells sandstone quoin stones. Stone of less
regular sizes was used on the east and south walls. The stone is of a
uniformly grey colour. It could have come from the lower beds of
Boughton Quarries, or from some working between there and
Mereworth. In any case a large quarry is indicated, to have provided so
much evenly-dimensioned stone.
The Manor House, High Street, Sevenoaks, of about 1800 (Newman
1980, 514), may be cited as a typical example, for its period, of fine
Kentish Rag ashlar, at least for the street frontage - the side elevations,
equally visible from the street, are of rubble stonework.
Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
In the early years of the nineteenth century Kentish Rag was widely
used for public buildings in Kent. Maidstone Gaol, 1811-19, with its
massive perimeter wall of Kentish Rag ashlar, with rusticated plinth
and buttresses, is one example. Another is Barming Heath Asylum,
now Oakwood Hospital, designed by John Whichcord senior (1830).
And fine ashlar masonry is to be seen in the piers of Thomas Telford's
(1829) Loose Viaduct, which carries the Maidstone-Cranbrook road
over the Loose valley.
Evidence for quarrying in east Kent is provided by a note in the
Canterbury Cathedral Chapter m i n u t e s of 1834, i n which the
woodreeve and surveyor, Mr Lake, was instructed to negotiate the
digging of stone on the chapter's estate at Great Chart. In Canterbury
the old Police Station, now the Music School, was built about 1840, in
a Gothic style to fit in with the neighbouring medieval Westgate. Its
yellow brick walls have ashlar quoins of Kentish Rag, of light grey east
Kent type.
With the coming of the mainline railways, from 1842 onwards,
freestones such as Bath stone became widely available - already in the
later 1830s, however, 300 tons per week of Caen stone were imported
to Canterbury (to rebuild the cathedral's north-west tower) via the new
Whitstable harbour and the Canterbury and Whitstable railway, which
was opened in 1830. Kentish Rag from the mid-nineteenth century
onwards became regarded primarily as a rubble walling stone.
Fortunately, a record of quarrying and building practice from the time
when ragstone still ranked as a building stone of high quality survives
in John Whichcord junior's (1846) Observations on Kentish Ragstone
as a Building Material, a privately printed version of a paper read by
118
I
KENTTSH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
119
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
the author at the Royal Institute of British Architects. As well as an
account of the succession at Boughton Quarries, referred to above
(p. 98), the work includes detailed stonework specifications for Holy
Trinity Church, Maidstone (built 1826) and Platt church, near Ightham
(1842).
In quarrying, according to this author, it was usual to remove the
less valuable layers by blasting with g unpowder. Quarries were
worked so as to expose the upper surface of each of the more valuable
beds in different places. The larger blocks of superior quality, known
as ashlar, were, for economy in transport, usually reduced as nearly as
possible to the required dimensions. Because the blocks could not be
sawn, the process, known as 'skiffling', was performed with a heavy
double-pointed hammer. In using ashlar, care was required to have the
stone laid upon its natural bed. The blocks for door and window
jambs and mullions needed to be set on end, but as the thickness
required was not great it could be got from the heart of the stone. In
contrast to ashlar, 'headers' were stones worked without much
attention to beds and joints, to give one face square or rectangular,
and the sides often receding at an acute angle so as to bring the
stones, when laid, to a closer joint. Headers were laid in coursed,
random coursed (levelled out in a rough manner at every foot or 16
in. in height), or random header work. In the cheapest, 'rough
random' work, the expense of heading was saved. It was stressed that
stones should be laid in ragstone mortar, as chalk lime would not
adhere to the ragstone.
Changes in Kentish Rag usage during the nineteenth century are
shown by Riverhead church, near Sevenoaks. Its tower and nave by
Decimus Burton, 1831, in a lancet style (Newman 1980, 469), have
rough random walling, coursed header plinth and parapet to the nave,
and ashlar window jambs and buttresses. All this stonework is of local,
coarsely sandy to gritty Kentish Rag. Tunbridge Wells sandstone was
brought into use for the elaborately carved west doorway, for hoodmouldings
and sills to the windows, and for a bold cornice just below
the parapet. In 1882, the chancel was rebuilt, by Sir Arthur Blomfield,
who used Kentish Rag only for random walling, and Bath stone for all
dressings. W hereas the stones of the 1831 nave walling show a
tendency to diagonal alignment, those of the chancel were deliberately
laid so, giving an effect, unlike anything seen in medieval work, as of
vertical crazy-paving. This type of diagonal random work was quite
common in the later part of the nineteenth century - St. John's church,
Sevenoaks (1 858-59), provides another example - and its use
continued into the present century, as shown by two barrack blocks in
Dover Castle, one of 1868 (with Bath stone dressings), the other of
1913 (with Portland stone dressings). 'Random coursed' walling of
120
N
PLATE VIII
1•-- -!r ea
(B.C. Wors.sam)
Church of St. Mary-the-Virgin, Riverhead, south side. The nave, to the left, by Decimus Burton, 1831: chancel and vestry,
to the right, by Sir Arthur Blomfield, 1882.
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BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
Kentish Rag, along with Bath, Caen, or other stone dressings, was,
however, also common in the same period. Instances in Sevenoaks are
the Vine Baptist church (1887) and the Methodist church, The Drive
(1904).
In the nineteenth century, indeed, although the tradition of finer
workmanship in Kentish Rag was lost sight of, as the quotation from
Howe (1910) at the beginning of this paper shows, the use of the stone
expanded greatly. Topley (1875, 375) gave a list, originally published
by Papworth (1858), of thirty-three Kentish Rag churches with Caen,
Bath or other stone dressings, built in London and its suburbs between
1841 and 1858. In Kent the stone is ubiquitous in nineteenth-century
suburban houses, schools, farm buildings, bridge abutments, retaining
walls, river and sea walls, and so on.
In the present century the use of Kentish Rag for building has
inevitably declined drastically. S o m e recent instances of its
employment are the use in about 1980 of stone from Offham Quarry
for the facing of retaining walls of the pedestrian underpasses to the
roundabout at the east end of the Medway bridge in Maidstone; the
r e s t o r a t i o n i n 1 9 8 6 by J o h n B y s o u t h Ltd. ( m a s o n s ) of the
fourteenth-century tracery of f i r s t - f l o o r c h a p e l w i n d o w s at
Eastbridge Hospital in the High Street, Canterbury; and, in Essex,
the new (1991) Roman Catholic Cathedral in Brentwood, designed
in classical style by Quinlan Terry, with Kentish Rag walling to
match the stonework of its Gothic Revival predecessor of 1861.
The Kentish Rag used in 1992-93 by stonemason Ray GammonHardaway
for facing the retaining wall along the riverside walk east of
the Medway in Maidstone is from two different quarries. The wall, for
300 m. northwards from Earl Street to the railway bridge, comprises
ten large panels between concrete uprights. The five southern panels
are of stone from Stangate Quarry, the last remaining of once extensive
lghtham quarries. The most northerly panel is of stone from the
Hermitage Lane Quarry, Barming, opened only in 1990, while
intervening panels show a mixture of stone from the two quarries.
Stone from the Hermitage Lane quarry has also been used for repairs to
East Farleigh church, near Maidstone.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would very much like to thank Veronica Tatton-Brown for wordprocessing
several drafts of this text, and John Atherton Bowen for
making the final version of the two figures.
122
KENTISH RAG AND OTHER KENT BUILDING STONES
TABLE 1
Summary of the Cretaceous geological succession ill Kent
Period Group Formation Approx. Main
thickness lithology
(m.) in Kent
London Clay 120 clay
(
Oldha, Beds 8 sand and pebble-beds
Palaeogene 'Lower
London Woolwich Beds 8 sand and clay
Tertiaries'
Thanet Beds 30 sand
Upper
Cretaceous Chalk 200 chalk and flints
!
Upper Greensand 0-5 sand
Gault
Gault 60 clay
j'"
lk"'to"' Beds 60 sand
Lower Lower Sandgate Beds 5-30 clay
Cretaceous Green sand Hythe Beds 30 rag and hassock
Atherfield Clay 5-20 clay
Weald Clay . 200 .. clay
'Wealden Hastings Beds 300 sandstones and clays
TABLE2
Ragstone bed names at Boughton Quarries
Anon., 1839 Whichcord 1846 Names in use in 1950
Robin
Land Rag Land Rag Green Rag
,, . Header Laying Thin
Yellow Rag Green Rag Potlids
Green Rag Yellow Rag Toughy
Pelsey Pelsea Pelsey
Colemans Coleman Coalman
Little Coleman
Great Rag Great Rag Ragstone
Newington Newington Cleaves Newington
Flinty Laying
Whitland Bridge (the best) Whiteland Bridge Whiteland Bridge
Main Bridge Main bridge Main
Garron Gari Girl
Horsebridge Horsebridge l Bottom Lane Headstone Laying
Second Bottom Lane Header Laying Bottom Lanes
2 or 3 lanes called Hoistings, some Header Laying
of which are more or less joined
2 or 3 thin lanes Upper Bottom Laying
Several lanes called Black Greys
Under Bottom Laying
White Rag
123
BERNARD C. WORSSAM and TIM TATTON-BROWN
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125
