Brookland

[poliphilo]

Brookland

This is St Augustine, Brookland, on the edge of Romney Marsh in Kent. There are lots of early 19th century people called Grist buried in the churchyard. I like to think they were my ancestors.

My father was stationed here during the war. He was with a Naval bomb disposal unit. Why the Germans were dropping bombs on a part of the world that contains nothing but sheep is beyond me.

The belltower stands separate from the church- like an Italian campanile. To the best of my knowledge there's nothing else like it in Britain. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The only way in which it resembles a campanile is in standing alone.

It's a wooden structure. I assume (I have no authority for this) that they built it light because of the difficulty of securing foundations in the marshy soil. The church itself is skewed everywhichaway and has had to have these brick buttresses built up against the south wall to stop it from keeling over.