Cranbrook is within the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Charing. The church is dedicated to St. Dunstan, confessor, and is very large and handsome. It consists of three isles and three chancels. The pillars on each side of the middle isle are beautifully slender and well proportioned. The west end has a gallery over it, ornamented with painting. The pews are uniform, and made of wainscot, and the pavement black and white marble. The high chancel is well ceiled, and decorated with paintings. The east window is full of fine stained glass, many of the figures of it being entire, and richly ornamented as to their drapery, &c. There are several shields of arms remaining in it, among which are those of Wilsford, Guldeford, quartered with Halden, within the order of the garter, and archbishop Bourchier, being those of the see of Canterbury, impaling first and fourth, Bouchier, second and third, gules, a fess between twelve billets, or. Archbishop Tenifon, in 1710, was a benefactor in repairing of the high chancel. Against the east wall of the fouth chancel is a very high and broad pyramid of white marble, on which there is a full account of the family of Roberts, inscribed by a most pompous scheme of pedigree, with the numerous coats of arms properly emblazoned. At the west end is a square tower steeple, in which are eight bells and a set of chimes. On the west side of the tower were formerly carved in the stone-work, though now decayed by time, the arms of Berham, Bettenham and Wilsford, in antient times owners of lands, as has been al ready mentioned, in this parish. In the fouth isle over the vault, in which the remains of the Bakers and their descendants lie, is a superb pyramid of white marble, on which are the names and the dates of their deaths, and at the top of it their arms. It was erected by John Baker Dowel, esq. of Over, son of John and Mary, in 1736.
extract from Hasted's History of Kent published in 1798 |
