Cranbrook Church

224 CRANBROOK CHURCH. towns having that suffix to their names, this alone, with the exception of Tonbridge and Edenbridge., proclaims the presence of water sufficient to entitle it to the designation of a "brook," or requiring a "bridge/' the present narrow stream running below the town representing what was then no doubt a brook of goodly proportions. May not this account for the selection by Edward III. of this spot for his imported broadcloth workers ? This brings us back to the Church itself. Its dedication to St. Dunstan is not without interef:!t. In the not remote parish of Mayfield, included also within the Weald, are still preserved reputed relics of that distinguished but much maligned Primate, who was wont to :find there a favourite place for retirement and retreat, and whose legendary life had no doubt made him an object of awe and veneration in the neighbourhood. Assuming then, as I think we must, that three successive churches have stood on this site, and more or less on the same lines, it is clear that the earliest could not have been built before the later years of the thirteenth century, and that would have been of the simple form. No bold massive Norman, or Romanesque, which belongs to the preceding centuries, and arrests the eye and calls out the admiration of the antiquary in almost every Church along the eastern fringe 0£ the county, nor any of that lighter and more ornate style which characterizes the following one, would be found or looked for in it. Rough rubble walls pierced by narrow lancet windows would probably have been the best that this retired, little known, and but recently redeemed Weald could boast. The question then arises, "Does any part of that ea1·liest church remain in the present building?" The answer must, I think, be in the affirmative. In the west end of the north aisle, in the corner abutting from the tower, the extreme and irregular thickness of the wall suggests that it must have formed the eastern wall of the basement of a tower; and this is confirmed by the discovery made by t.he Rev. T. A. Carr of the foundations of such a tower extending westwa,rd from this north aisle, where the lines could be