Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/183

Rh porch (now used as a vestry) and square west tower with battlements and stair turret. There are E. E., Dec., Perp., late Perp., and modern, portions. The font is Dec. The south chancel contains an ogée-headed piscina. Within recollection the approach to the roodloft from an outside door in the south wall by stairs through the wall remained open, and the upper doorway still exists. Some of the faces of the piers and capitals of the chancel arch are concave. The north and south entrances are now closed. Like some other churches of the district the outside walls are coated with "rough-cast."—"At Forsham (in this parish) are the ruines of an antient stone structure, of the shape of a little chappel: and supposed so to have been, to an antient seat, near thereunto (called Forsham) long since dilapidated; but the scite thereof, and how the same was moted, is yet visible" (Kilburne.) By some these ruins are imagined to be those of a fort. (Hasted.) Traces of buildings at Forsham are, it appears, still perceptible. (Hist. of Romney Marsh, 84.) Mr. Holloway mentions also Lowden, otherwise called Little Maytham, castle in this parish, situated opposite the Castle Toll in Newenden to the north, (ut sup).

275. .—Brass: John Ips and wife. (Hasted.)

276. —"Ecclia de Nova Romeney cum capellis Sancti Laurencii et Sancti Martini in eadem villa." (Val. Eccl.) "Here were antiently five churches, called St. Laurence, St. Martin, St. John Baptist, one other whose name I find not, and St. Nicholas;" which last, the only one now standing, is the parish church. A priory (a cell to the foreign abbey of Pontiniac, Hasted) was founded here by Sir John Mansell, A.D. 1257, and suppressed 2 of K. Henry V. There was also a hospital. The harbour was destroyed about the fifteenth year of K. Edward I. (Kilburne.)—The nameless church above was called St. Michael, being "mentioned in a will the beginning of K. Henry VIII;" St. Laurence, St. Martin, and St. John in a will 25 of K. Henry VIII: "but before the end of that reign they seem to have been all disused.—Besides the churchyard adjoining to St. Nicholas church there are five others belonging to it." (He must mean five churchyards including that of St. Nicholas.) The vicars of St. Nicholas are styled "vicars of New Romney" without any distinction from 1458 downwards; therefore the other churches were always subordinate in some manner. (Hasted.) (Note the quotation from Val. Eccl. above.) The hospital was for lepers, founded by Adam de Cherryng temp. Archb. Baldwin (about