Sevington
For years I have passed by this church whilst driving on the Ashford Orbital Road and thought how it appeared to be a place where time had stood still, but I had never taken the trouble to turn off the busy main road, until now that is. This area is becoming increasingly commercialized by Ashford Business Park. But once this was unspoilt countryside. Sevington never appears to have been highly populated, not in modern times anyway. Hasted, in his “The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent” described it as “a very small parish, having only eleven houses in it” in 1798. It seems always to have been a geographically small village and was recorded in the Domesday Book. St Mary's Church is a Norman church with alterations made about 1200 and in the 14th century. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, it had a population of about 113 in 1872. Despite this there is at least one fairly new grave in the church graveyard. Unfortunately like so many churches when not open for services it was locked when I visited. Apparently, there are several gravestones in this church, all which have been robbed of their brasses, presumably before the church was locked!
At the west end is a spire steeple which, a little unusual for Kent, is shingled.
Sevington
For years I have passed by this church whilst driving on the Ashford Orbital Road and thought how it appeared to be a place where time had stood still, but I had never taken the trouble to turn off the busy main road, until now that is. This area is becoming increasingly commercialized by Ashford Business Park. But once this was unspoilt countryside. Sevington never appears to have been highly populated, not in modern times anyway. Hasted, in his “The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent” described it as “a very small parish, having only eleven houses in it” in 1798. It seems always to have been a geographically small village and was recorded in the Domesday Book. St Mary's Church is a Norman church with alterations made about 1200 and in the 14th century. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, it had a population of about 113 in 1872. Despite this there is at least one fairly new grave in the church graveyard. Unfortunately like so many churches when not open for services it was locked when I visited. Apparently, there are several gravestones in this church, all which have been robbed of their brasses, presumably before the church was locked!
At the west end is a spire steeple which, a little unusual for Kent, is shingled.