St Peters Church, Boughton Monchelsea

St Peters Church is situated in a lovely location on the outskirts of Boughton Monchelsea on a hillside overlooking Boughton Park and its verdant fields redolent with wild deer.

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All Saints Church in Loose

All Saints Church in Loose is a beautiful old church with a beautiful churchyard in a beautiful village. Beautiful! An ancient churchyard surrounds the church on all sides and features some really interesting old graves. The church is built on a significant slope so the grounds to the rear of the building are raised up to overlook the adjacent vicarage and its pretty gardens. The churchyard extends down the slope away from the church where it meets a raised wall overlooking the picturesque loose stream and path as the they meander towards the chequers pub nearby.

The church and churchyard are very old and the site dates back at least to the norman invasion of 1066 – a yew tree on the site is actually mentioned in the historical Domesday Book of 1086. The church is in active and busy use and is home to a large and enthusiastic congregation from the village and surrounding area.

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Aylesford Priory

An old religious site near Maidstone in Kent, a centre for prayer and contemplation since the Middle Ages, its also known as “The Frairs”. I visited Aylesford Priory in September 2012 with my friends Austin and Guiseppe. I am not a religious person but i am very interested in religious history and religious imagery and there is plenty of interest to see at Aylesford Priory. It’s well worth a visit, though unfortunately many of the original buildings were badly damaged by fire in the 1930’s.

Extensive rebuilding work was undertaken in the 1960’s to bring us the site as it is today. According to an employee at the priory a large posse of itinerant irish workers from a nearby building site were cajoled into helping with the restoration of the priory. They were  persuaded to work for free by the religious hierarchy who pointed out they were doing gods work and since the workmen were good irish catholics they couldn’t possibly be paid for their labours! I’m sure the boys were supplied with plenty of cups of tea though and got free use of the confessions box!

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More info can be found at the friars website .

East Farleigh Church in Kent

East Farleigh Church, other wise known as “The Ancient Parish Church of East Farleigh” is found at the top of farleigh hill opposite the Bull pub. It is about 3 miles outside of Maidstone in Kent. The churchyard sports lovely views of old farleigh bridge and the medway river winding through the valley below. The church has a steeple and appears to have been modernised in places, though is likely to have originally been built in the middle ages by the normans. A churchyard surrounds the church on all sides and is of a fairly large size. More info can be found at the east farleigh website .

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St Mary of Charity Church, Faversham, Kent

Faversham is situated in the north of Kent, near Canterbury, and Faversham Church is unsurprisingly situated in the aforementioned town. Its a really lovely church, I didn’t get a chance to look inside because it was closed but from the outside it is very striking and sports a beautiful spire as shown in the photos. It doesn’t appear to be very old – maybe 1700’s – but the brickwork uses an unconventional material – maybe flint stone, i’m not sure – but it looks damn fine.  Its probably stone from a local quarry but I could not find any confirmation of this. You may notice a mysterious bespectacled man in some of the pictures. This is my friend Austin and you may ignore him if you wish. 🙂 Begone Austin!

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More info about this church