St Mary's Church, Capel-le-Ferne

St Mary’s Church stands on high ground north of Folkestone, a quiet 12th-century building now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. It sits alone beside Capel Church Farm, separated from the A20 by a stretch of open field. The church was enlarged in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, and a west tower was added in the 13th century. After a Victorian restoration in 1890 the congregation declined, and in 1986 it was declared redundant and placed in the care of the Trust. The church’s flint walls and tiled roofs enclose a nave, chancel, south porch and two-stage tower. The tower has buttresses, string courses and a plain parapet, while the nave’s north wall still shows a small Norman window from the 12th century. Most of the windows date from the 15th century, when the building was widened and given its present light. Inside, a fourteenth-century stone screen divides nave from chancel and carries four corbels that once held the rood screen. Above the screen is a round-headed opening that framed the rood cross, a feature found nowhere else in England. The chancel holds an aumbry, a sedilia and a thirteenth-century piscina with trefoil head. Fragments of medieval glass remain in the east window, and the north window recess is painted with foliage. The octagonal font stands on an octagonal stem, and a brass of 1526 and a marble plaque to General Sir Charles William Dunbar Staveley mark the memorials.