LATER ADDITIONS
During the ‘Perpendicular’ period of architecture (about 1350 to 1530) other additions were
made, most notably the 60 ft. high battlemented, three stage west tower, the battlemented south porch (with its priest’s room above) and the great east window.
The porch, with its impressive cross-ribbed vaulting and low seats, was the site of the earliest school in the district when the priest acted as the schoolmaster. In mediaeval times the first part of the marriage service took place here and this is where wills were signed and penance was done. The small room above, known as a parvise (upper chamber), was used to house travelling priests the night before they said mass and its narrow slit windows indicate that this is perhaps where the vestments, church treasures and parish records were once kept. During the Second World War it was used to store emergency food rations while the Home Guard also kept a nightly vigil on top of the tower until such time that the prospect of invasion ceased
to be a threat. The parvise is empty and unused today.
The magnificent tower, like the rest of the church, is well buttressed to save the structure from subsidence in the soft marshland soils. As early as 1455 there is a record of one William Warde bequeathing 40s (£2) to the parishioners on condition that they should buy new bells and by 1552 there is another record of four bells in the church. The present bells were recast into a ring of five by John Wilner in 1624 although the fourth was again recast, by Samuel Knight, in 1724. Sadly the St. George’s peal has not echoed across the flat acres of the Romney Marsh since the early 1970s and is, at the time of writing, silent and unringable. At the north east corner of the tower is a higher octagonal beacon turret which, in a typically Kentish fashion, houses the staircase leading to the roof. On this turret in July 1588 it is probable that a fire as lit to am the villagers of the presence of the Spanish Armada just a few miles away in the Channel. The view from the tower affords magnificent vistas across the whole of the marsh from the North Downs above Folkestone in the east, via Dungeness to Rye and Fairlight westwards into Sussex.
The late fifteenth century also saw the addition of much of the church’s excellent woodwork. The carved wooden parclosè screens, which operate the side chapels from the chancel, the choir stalls (unusually ‘returned,’ ie at right-angles, as found in cathedrals) and the rood screen (only the base of which remains today and which originally separated the chancel and nave) were all locally made at this time. Although none of these additions stand by themselves as great works of art, they represent the solid English, hand-made vernacular style from an age before mass-produced and machine-made furnishings. They are certainly some of the church’s remaining ‘treasures.’ The plainly moulded font. made from Kentish ragstone, also dates from this period.
