PLANS OF, AND BRIEF ARCHITECTURAL NOTES ON,
KENT CHURCHES
SECOND SERIES. PART III
By F. C. ELLISTON-ERWOOD, F.S.A.
THE CHURCH OE THE CISTERCIAN ABBEY OE ST. MARY, BOXLEY
No excuse is offered for confining this instalment of " Notes on Kent
Churches " to one building—and that not a parish church, not even
a church in being, but a none-too-easily seen and comprehended ruin.
The Abbey Churches of Kent have not received generous treatment
from investigators. The general history of each house is given in
V.CH. Kent, II, but notes on the fabric or extant remains are not
included. The two Cathedral Priories of Canterbury and Rochester are
fully described in Archmologia Cantiana, though the plan of Rochester
Cathedral Church in Vol. XXIII is not now regarded as entirely satisfactory,
and the amended version in Arch. Jour., LXXXVI, by the late
Dr. Fairweather, while more reasonable, is but a suggestion based on
no certain authority. The accounts of the two Premonstratensian
houses of West Langdon and of Bradsole (Arch. Cant., XIV and XV),
the Benedictines of St. Augustine, Canterbury (Plan in Arch. Cant.,
XL) and Dover Priory (Arch. Cant., IV, only partly superseded by
Dr. Haines' book, 1930) comprise practicaUy all the useful material on
Kent monastic planning and architecture in our Journal. Publications
elsewhere include " Lesnes Abbey, Erith " (Clapham, 1915), " Mailing
Abbey " (Arch. Jour., LXXXVIII and a forthcoming paper in Antiq.
Jour.), the Blackfriars of Canterbury (Arch. Jour., LXXXVI), the
Greyfriars of Greenwich (Arch. Jour., LXXX) and of Canterbury
(Cotton, 1924, though with an impossible plan corrected in Franciscan
Architecture in England, 1937).1 Boxley is the subject of this account.
The omissions from this list are considerable. Faversham,
Davington, Higham, Minster-in-Sheppey, Monks Horton, Bilsington,
Combwell, Tonbridge and Ledes, and practically all the friaries except
Aylesford (Arch. Cant., LXIII) and those above mentioned are without
any published plan. Nor is this gap in our architectural history likely
1 The Report of the Annual Meeting of the Royal Archseological Institute at
Canterbury in 1929 and the part of the Journal (Vol. LXXXVI) containing that
report gives briefly all the available information concerning the monastic institutions
of East Kent, with many plans, including a very good one of Canterbury.
45
NOTES. ON KENT CHURCHES
to be filled. Apart from the fact that several of the sites are not possible
subjects for excavation, medieval studies of this nature are not in
favour at the moment and the cost of any such investigation, bemg for
the most part pure nawying and not the brush and hand-trowel
technique that is the vogue to-day, is almost prohibitive. The great
priory of Ledes was excavated over a century ago and it is said that a
large crypt was discovered, but no records appear to have survived and
there is little or nothing now above ground. Boxley was very nearly
another example of the same sort: its rescue from oblivion is the
reason for the following description.
The first mention of Boxley Abbey in the Society's proceedings wasin
1882 when the Annual Meeting was held at Maidstone. The site was
not visited, but a paper was read by Mr. F. R. Surtees (the occupier of
the house) wherein he described all that was visible, and hazarded a
guess that the " Chapter House, Slype and Day Room " lay under a
high raised bank that is still visible on the east side of the lawn fronting
the present house. This lawn was correctly described as the site of the
cloister, and the church was located, also accurately, as being covered
by a terrace of masonry running east and west from the said high
bank. Nothing more transpired till 1901, when again the Society met
at Maidstone, and this time visited the Abbey site. There is very little
in Arch. Cant, about this meeting and most of the information concerning
it is derived from newspaper accounts of the gathering. From these
sources it seems that in 1898 or thereabouts, George Payne, one-time
Secretary of the Society and an indefatigable antiquary (he has been
described as the " Sir William Hope of the K.A.S.") and Major Best,
the then occupier, carried out some examination of the remains.
Payne discovered by means of his " divining rod " some of the walls of
the original building, parts of which were plastered. Further details
are vague, but a paper was read to the members, evidently incorporating
much of Mr. Surtees' material. What, however, is of greater
importance is a paragraph in the newspaper account to the effect that
" Mrs. Wilham Mercer laid out the chancel as a rose garden, the lines
of box plants in which represented the nave of the church and the
paths the transepts." This is not a very lucid note but the implication
seems to be that walls were found, and their position marked by box
edging and/or gravel paths.
No other written or printed account of this examination is known
to me but evidently a plan was made. It cannot now be traced but it
may survive in a photograph taken by the Rev. Gardner-Waterman
and of which I have a copy (? the only copy). This plan is a very poor
production, ill drawn and far from clear in its details and at first glance
unlike any known Cistercian plan. It is difficult to believe that it was
drawn by Mr. Hubert Bensted, who was, I believe, an architect, though
46
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NOTES ON KENT CHURCHES
his name is associated with it. A note on the plan says " Rough ground
Plan out of proportion."
Again the matter of Boxley Abbey was forgotten until the spring of
1920 when the late Sir Alfred (then Mr.) Clapham and I made a tour of
the Monastic remains in the county, measuring and planning as much as
possible in the limited time at our disposal. We visited Boxley and
from measurements then taken produced a plan of which I possess
a tracing. This, of course, did not show anything that was still buried
but it did fit the visible walls into a reasonable scheme. This was, of
course, Clapham's work, his extraordinary flair for matters monastic,
making this, for him, an easy task. But the eastern termination of the
abbey church as our plan showed it, was impossible. We had faithfully
followed the tradition and carefully plotted box edging and path, but
the result made it obvious that either the tradition was wrong or that
(not a very difficult matter) we had misinterpreted the information.
The quire and transepts were just what should have been expected
save that they were shrunken to a ridiculous proportion. The incongruity
was apparent but the solution was elusive, and Boxley once more
lapsed into limbo.
For the third time a forthcoming visit of the Society was the reason
for revived interest and as it fell to me to be the guide on this occasion,
I set about the task of putting the available material in some sort of
order, and for this purpose I once more visited the site with all the plans.
In a momentary flash of inspiration the whole thing became crystal
clear : instead of the paths being on the buried walls they were inside
them, and the box edging marked their inner faces. The truth of this
was soon confirmed by my " divining rod," a stout steel probe, and the
problem was solved. The redrawn plan accompanying this paper was
the result. (Fig. 1.)
The Abbey of Boxley was founded in 1146 and its history thenceforth
is detailed in V.C.H. Kent, Vol. II, so there is no need to repeat it here,
especially as none of the entries seem to refer to building operations.
The church as shown on the plan is clearly that of an early Cistercian
type, based in the main on Fontenay (France) founded 1118. The first
house of the order erected in England was Waverley in Surrey, built
from 1128 onwards, and excavation1 there showed the first church to
have been without aisles but with an eastern arm as at Boxley, though
the later church, commenced in 1203 and not consecrated till 1278 was
on a much grander scale that does not appear to have been achieved at
Boxley. Tintern seems to have been the first church built with aisles
(1131) and though Boxley has no associations with that house being
colonized direct from Clairvaux, it is evident that the Fontenay plan
was the source of this and of many other small houses at home and
1 Waverley Abbey, H. Brakspear, F.S.A., Surrey Archseological Society, 1905.
47
NOTES ON KENT CHURCHES
abroad. Among these were Bonmont (Switzerland) 1137, Buildwas
1135 (though this house started as a Savignac foundation), Hauterne
(Switzerland) 1137, Alvastra (Sweden) 1143, Roche 1147, Noirlac
(France) 1150, and Fossanova (Italy) 1208. In all of these the aisled
nave, the transepts with two chapels in each, and the quire projecting
one bay east of the transepts, were common features and this plan
appears to have survived unaltered at Boxley till the dissolution in 1538
which, it will be remembered, was accompanied by the unpleasant
incident of the " Holy Rood of Boxley " that so exercises most writers
on the Abbey.
Of the actual remains of the Abbey church there is, in truth, not
much that can be identified and just as httle to say about them. The
whole of the eastern arm and transepts are below ground and only the
outlines have been preserved by the box edging. The nave is a water
garden with a pool extending almost the entire length of it, and when
I saw it last a generous growth of lush vegetation obscured any details
that may survive. The nave arcades are destroyed completely and the
position of the piers on the plan, though probable, is hypothetical.
At the west end of the south wall is a doorway that was opened out
by Payne ; it is original and may have given on to a porch which
would have served as ah entry to the western range. Now it leads
into a recess used for storing garden implements, but in the western
wall are the remains of a blocked window and on its sill are kept some
fragments of fourteenth century tabernacle work, part, most likely,
of a tomb or recess, but not in situ. On the exterior of the south wall
is the jamb of a doorway. This gives the line of the eastern wall of
the western range and the opening probably was either the entry to
the outer parlour or was in some way concerned with the lay-brothers'
quarters. The lesser and modern buttress a few yards west of this,
may mask the tear-away of the west wall of the same range, but so
much of the fabric has been tampered with that it is not easy to be
certain of anything.
On the west wall of the church are some indications of a structure
abutting against it. The remains look medieval and it may be that
here was a narthex or porch for which there are many parallels. They
are so described on the old plan above mentioned but are shown as
extending only across the south aisle and an interment is indicated where
a normal narthex might be expected to extend. The same plan also
notes the remains of a sedilia in the quire and patches of tiled pavement
in various places. There is a photograph of some of this tiling on a
photograph by Mr. Gardner-Waterman, but with the exception of a
neatly laid border of plain lozenges placed herring-bone fashion, the
remainder appears somewhat of a patchwork. This is about all that
can be said concerning the church but I feel that wherever original
48
NOTES ON KENT CHURCHES
work exists it belongs to the period of the foundation and there is little
or no evidence of subsequent enlargement. A rather disconcerting
statement on the Bensted plan says of the area comprising the western
end of the quire and the mouth of the south transept " Roman debris
found all over this area."
It was not the intention of the writer to go further than this and
deal with the vestiges of the monastic buildings as excavation can only
settle the many disputed points, but as some reference has of necessity
been made above to some parts of these buildings, this paper might
end with a few comments on what still remains visible and the interpretation
of these fragments. The account can thus serve till
excavation and a new generation of archaeologists, according to ancient
custom, proceed to indicate how and where their predecessors erred.
The PRECINCT (Fig. 2) comprises an area of about 23 acres
surrounded by an irregular polygonal wall which appears to be of various
dates and some of it clearly recent, and there seem to be indications of
entrances and door openings other than the great gate to the west. This
GATEHOUSE is built in the main of red brick and cannot be much
earlier than the date of the dissolution. It lies back some hundred
yards or so from the major road, being approached by a lane. The
abbey site is some distance removed from the village with its interesting
church and even now has that seclusion and privacy that the Cistercian
communities demanded. The only feature of note within the precinct
other than the Abbey buildings is the GREAT BARN 200 ft. long which
is likewise of fifteenth/sixteenth century date. There are traces of
dried out fishponds and on the north side of the enclosure are other
ponds with the remains of a sluice, obviously to control the Abbey
'water supply, obtained from a stream coming down from the hills above.
Under the great bank to the east of the site are undoubtedly the
remains of the SACRISTY, CHAPTER HOUSE and the undercroft
of the DORMITORY. Of these nothing can be said except that the
extension of this range southwards is limited by the presence of the
Great Drain of the RERE-DORTER. This drain extends for some
distance and is in good condition and retains much of its covering. Its
date is somewhat problematical, as the masonry is rather crude and of
large stones, but there seems to be no other reason why it should not be
contemporary with the foundation.
The WESTERN RANGE has been mentioned in connection with
the church, and it extended in all likelihood at least a hundred feet to
the south where two parallel walls of the existing dwelling house seem
to belong to this building. It was characteristic of Cistercian planning
to have a long western range to accommodate the lay brethren who
were part of the organization and whose dormitory and frater were
located here.
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