St Augustine, Brookland

St Augustine’s is a Grade I parish church on the High Street at Brookland, on Walland Marsh in Kent, in the Diocese of Canterbury. It is known for a separate Grade I timber belfry standing a yard north of the nave.

Overview

Historic England lists the church (1230943) as mid-thirteenth-century with fourteenth-, fifteenth- and eighteenth-century work, restored in 1790 by Thomas White and again in the 1950s and 1960s. The fabric is roughly coursed mixed stone under a plain tile roof: a continuous nave and chancel, unequal north and south aisles, north porch and a small medieval north stair turret. The nave was extended two bays west in the fourteenth century. The chancel keeps thirteenth-century lancets. A circular lead font of about 1175, showing the Signs of the Zodiac above the Labours of the Months, predates the present church.

The detached belfry (list 1344151) is a rare late-twelfth- or thirteenth-century square open timber tower, enclosed in the mid-fifteenth century by an octagonal shingled structure of three diminishing stages. Dendrochronology has dated the inner structure to 1262–74 and the aisles to 1394–1414. Marshy ground is the usual explanation for keeping the bells off the church walls. A medieval wall painting of the murder of Thomas Becket was uncovered in 1964. The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust notes one of only five detached wooden belfries remaining in England.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1230943 (church)
• Historic England list entry 1344151 (belfry)
• The Marsh Churches: Brookland
• Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust: Brookland