Old Soar Manor Chapel, Plaxtol
Old Soar Manor Chapel, Plaxtol
The chapel at Old Soar Manor is part of a Grade I late thirteenth-century solar wing near Plaxtol, Kent, a rare surviving knightly dwelling owned by the National Trust and managed with English Heritage.
- Location
- Plaxtol, Kent
- Country
- England
- County
- Kent
- City / town
- Plaxtol
- Address
- Plaxtol, Kent, TN15 0QX
- Postcode
- TN15 0QX
- Built
- c.1290; chapel with early C14 piscina
- Denomination
- National Trust
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Early English
- Materials
- Coursed Kentish ragstone rubble; red clay-tiled roofs
- Grid reference
- TQ 619 540
- Opening hours
- Open every day except Friday, from April to September.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic England lists Old Soar on Old Soar Road as remains of a manor house of about 1290 with fourteenth-century alterations and twentieth-century restoration: a solar wing with chapel and garderobe chamber from a first-floor hall-house, the hall itself replaced in the eighteenth century by Old Soar Farmhouse. English Heritage describes roughly coursed Kentish ragstone rooms standing over vaulted undercrofts. The Kent Historic Environment Record gives listing NGR TQ 61941 54094 and notes a National Trust property formerly in the guardianship of the Department of the Environment, also scheduled as an ancient monument.
The National Trust record places the chapel on the first floor above an undercroft, entered from outside by a doorway with chamfered jambs and a segmental-pointed arch. It is lit by a large pointed two-light window (restored in the 1940s) and two further arched windows. An early fourteenth-century piscina in the south-west wall has a cinquefoiled head, trefoil and crocket decoration and a hexagonal drain. The chapel served the Culpeper household as a private oratory, avoiding the journey to the parish church at Wrotham. Mrs S. L. Cannon gave the medieval wing to the National Trust in 1947.