light (meaning in weight not in brightness) at midnight as at
noonday." The church, indeed, dedicated in honour of Our Lady is a
very beautiful and extraordinarily interesting building of the end of
the thirteenth century, in the same style as the practically
contemporary work in Westminster Abbey and, according to the architect
and historian, G.E. Street, who restored it, possibly from the design
of the same master-mason. Certainly nothing in the whole county of
Kent is better worth a visit. It would seem to have been built with a
part of the money offered at the shrine of St William in the Cathedral
of Rochester upon the Pilgrim's Way; for Stone belonged to the Bishops
of Rochester, who had a manor house there. The nave, aisles, chancel,
and tower are all in the Early English style and very noble work of
their kind, built in the time of Bishop Lawrence de Martin of
Rochester (1251-1274); while to the fourteenth century belongs the
vestry to the north of the chancel and the western windows in nave and
aisles and the piers of the tower as we now see them. Perhaps the
oldest thing in the church is the doorway in the north aisle which
would seem to be Norman, but Street tells us that this "is a curious
instance of imitation of earlier work, rather than evidence of the
doorway itself being earlier than the rest of the church."

Within, the church is delightful, increasing in richness of detail
eastward towards the chancel where nothing indeed can surpass the
beauty of the arcade, so like the work at Westminster, borne by
pillars of Purbeck, its spandrels filled with wonderfully lovely,
delicate, and yet vigorous foliage. Here are two brasses, one of 1408
to John Lambarde, the rector in Chaucer's day, the other of 1530 to
Sir John Dew. In the north aisle we may find certain ancient paintings
the best preserved of which represents the Madonna and Child.