Trottescliffe Church

212 TROTTESCLIFFE CHURCH. of the masonry used is noteworthy. Generally five stones are used in each short jamb, and their narrow round arched heads are turned sometimes with eight stones, sometimes with nine stones, and in one case thirteen stones actually appear in the little round arch of the small window in the south wall. All these stones are of tufa, which resembles grey sponge in appearance. I t is difficult to discover in Kent any example of the earliest Norman walling and windows so well preserved and so unaltered as these in the chancel of Trottescliffe Church, thanks to the care of the rector, the Eev. C. W. Shepherd. The tower, built against the middle of the nave's south wall, retains very little trace of its early date. I believe that it was built in the time of Gilbert de Glanville, who was Bishop of Eochester from 1185 to 1214. He rebuilt the episcopal manor house here, about A.D. 1187. At that period several Kentish towers were erected on the south side of the nave, as at Tong, Bapehild, Throwley, Preston by Faversham, and at Trottescliffe. The plan of the tower at base (according to measurements made by the Eev. C. W. Shepherd) may be said to be externally 20 feet square, and internally 12 feet square. The actual measurements are exterior 20 feet 3 inches by 19 feet 9 inches, and interior 12 feet 1 inch by 11 feet 8 inches. The walls are 4 feet thick up to the first course where they batter to 3 feet, and they lessen in thickness as they rise higher. From the tower we enter the nave through a doorway of the Transition period (between Norman and Early English). West of that doorway, higher up in the south wall of the nave and north wall of the tower, is a pointed doorway, the sill of which is nearly on a level with the apex of the entrance doorway. Bjr means of wooden steps, or a ladder, access from the nave to the tower was afforded by this doorway. The aperture through the wall of the tower is roughly pierced, and contains no hewn stone. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries alterations were made in the tower. Its exterior buttresses were added, probably, in 1509 when repairs were going on, towards the cost of which Alice Deysey of Addington bequeathed a bullock. A vestry is formed in the south-west angle of the tower, and in the window of that vestry are two ancient quarries, or diamond panes of glass. One bears the sacred monogram (f) 8, and the other a plain device conventional but somewhat floral. The plan of the church as it now exists was thus formed and completed, probably, before or very soon after A.D. 1200. For 690 years that plan has remained the same. In the reign of Edward II., or in the early part of his son's reign, Bishop Hamo de Hethe altered and improved the interior of the church. In the north wall of the nave is a two-light window inserted by him, which contains portions of good coloured glass ; and on the south side of the chancel there is another similar window of the Decorated period. A piscina niche of that style likewise remains in the south wall,