St. George's Church, Beckenham

St George’s Church stands in the centre of Beckenham, a town once in Kent and now part of Greater London. It is the principal Church of England parish church and holds Grade II* listed status. The building began as a medieval church in the twelfth century and was rebuilt between 1885 and 1887 by local architect W. Gibbs Bartleet. The southwest tower, completed in 1902–1903, rises above the High Street as the church’s focal point. A 13th-century timber lychgate at the entrance is said to be the oldest in England. The church suffered bomb damage in July 1944 during the Second World War. The church is built in the Decorated style of the early fourteenth century. The tower has four stages with buttresses and an embattled parapet topped by pinnacles. The nave features a large west window with intricate flowing tracery and a clerestory of paired two-light windows. The aisles have three-light windows with varied Decorated tracery, while the transepts hold large windows with transoms and different tracery designs. At the east end, the chancel has a five-sided apse with crocketed pinnacles and a low parapet pierced with trefoils. Inside, the church contains Victorian pews and stalls, a polygonal pulpit on a 1906 stone base, and a damaged twelfth- or thirteenth-century font returned from storage. The Lady chapel’s apse holds a piscina with a credence shelf from the old church. Victorian stained glass by Thomas Freeth fills the west window and apse windows, with designs also in thirteen other windows. Many monuments by masons such as John Flaxman and Sir Francis Chantrey were moved from the old church, along with church plate. The churchyard includes eighteenth-century gravestones and the memorial of William, Lord Auckland.