St Mary's Church, Hadlow

St Mary’s Church stands in the village of Hadlow, Kent, a Grade II* listed building mostly built of ragstone with some Tunbridge Wells sandstone. The church mixes Early English and Decorated styles, its slate chancel roof contrasting with tiled nave and aisle roofs. A shingled spire rises above the tower, which carries a clock made by John Thwaites of Clerkenwell in 1791. Inside, the stained glass windows date from the 19th and 20th centuries, the most recent being Francis Skeat’s 1956 design called The Visitation. The church’s history reaches back to a wooden building recorded in 975, rebuilt in stone after 1018. Richard de Clare extended the church in the 12th century and later granted it to the Knights Hospitallers, who held a preceptory nearby. The tower and spire were raised in the 15th century, and bequests paid for windows, doors, the tower and even a lamp in the chancel. In 1847 the chancel was rebuilt and a north aisle added for £470 raised by public subscription. Visitors find an interior dominated by a large three-manual organ of 1880, one of the largest in a village church in south-east England. The Coverdale Chair, owned by the translator of the first English Bible, was returned to St Mary’s in 1967 after a spell in Rochester Cathedral. Eight bells hang for change ringing, with inscriptions naming founders from 1695 and 1775. Outside, a Grade II listed oast-house-shaped memorial in the churchyard remembers thirty hop-pickers lost in the Hartlake disaster of 1853.