Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/354

It stands close to a finely carved pulpit four hundred years old. The north porch is a memorial to the first Lord Justice of England―Sir James Lewis Knight-Bruce, who with his wife lies buried almost within its shadow. On an old house close by is a "cow" vane―when I made the sketch given, pigeons by the score from a neighbouring cote kept perching on it in a very friendly and picturesque fashion. Two miles further in the same direction brings us to the village of Newington, which possesses one of the quaintest little churches in Kent. Among other things it boasts some seventeen brasses―some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries―an ancient dial, on oaken shaft fast mouldering away―and a picturesque wooden belfry surmounted by a vigorously modelled gilt weathercock in capital preservation.

On Sevington spire, near Ashford, is a daintily designed vane, dated 1866. Some storm has given it―as the sailors say―a list to port, but that seems somehow not to take away from but to add to its charm. It carried away, almost bodily, three out of the four letters which denote the compass-points, but have in mercy spared poor piggy's curly tail.

A mile or so further on is a daintily-designed but very simple vane, which stands on the north-east corner of the tower of the ancient church of St. Martin at Cheriton. Canon Scott Robertson, the well-known antiquarian, pronounces this tower to be of unusual interest. He tells us that it is probably pre-Norman, but certainly was erected before the end of the 11th century. Traces of characteristic, rough, wide-jointed masonry and a small, round-headed doorway should be specially noted. Let us linger in the church itself for a few moments. In the north Chantry (13th century) we shall find an interesting mural tablet thus inscribed:―

"Here lieth Interred the Body of Mrs. Elizabeth Raleigh, Grand Daughter of the FAMED Sr Walter Raleigh, who died at the Enbrook, 26 day of October, 1716, aged 30 years."