St Lawrence the Martyr, Otterden: William Paxton’s church

 St Lawrence the Martyr, Otterden: William Paxton’s church

St Lawrence Church, in the ancient parkland of Otterden House on the North Downs, is now a private chapel but was as we know, from 1850 to 1882, William Paxton’s living: the parish church for the village is now St Mary’s Stalisfield, Jerome Nicholas’ church.

The church is dedicated to St Lawrence (or Laurence). St Lawrence was executed in the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Valerian in 258; another Lawrence was sent by Rome to convert the Anglo-Saxons of Kent to Christianity; arriving in Thanet in 597 or 601, he was Archbishop of Canterbury from 604 to 619, the year of his death. 

In a countryside described by Edward Hasted* in 1798 as ‘poor and barren’ with steep flint roads ‘unsafe to travellers’, it was surprising to find a sophisticated classical Georgian church in austere red brick, built in1753–4 on the footings of the original flint thatched 13th-century foundation. The bricks were probably made in the estate for both Otterden House and the church, as transporting bricks imported from Holland and landed on Faversham Quay was impossible over the existing roads.  

The 1750s’ rebuild was financed by the Reverend Granville Wheler, £400 of the cost coming from the will of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, Granville’s sister-in-law. The elegance of the ‘Chinese Chippendale’ fretwork benches, painted to look as if they were of grained wood, and the monuments to previous owners of Otterden House, made William’s church a very special space. Sir William Lewin’s seven daughters are lined up in identical ruffs and bonnets under his tomb; his son Justinian lies in full armour, with his widow and daughter kneeling beside him, both moved from the old church into a recess in the north wall of the new one. 

These were almost certainly sculpted by Epiphanius Evesham, a pupil of the Anglo-Dutch master Richard Stephens: Evesham was noted for ‘the gift of grouping’ and also made monuments to the Roper family in Lynsted Church and the Hawkins’ in Boughton-under-Blean (home of Phoebe and George Coulson). They were both recusant (Catholic) families, who trusted Evesham, who passed as an Anglican but had Catholic sympathies, to memorialise their dead in ways that looked Anglican but had secret images within the sculpture that a Catholic would understand.

*Edward Hasted wrote a topographical history of Kent in  12 volumes (1779–99), with such details as being attacked by ‘biting flies’ as he surveyed an apple orchard!

Thanks are due to Faversham Life (favershamlife@gmail.com) for some of the material in this post, taken from their post of 19 April 2019,and to Barbara !