The Nave and Chancel © PE Blanche 2001 On the details of Vicars - our old "friend", "Blue Dick" Culmer © PE Blanche 2001		Again I will mention the books about Kent Country Churches by Syms who states that Goodnestone is an "Estate Village". It is a rare example in East Kent, particularly where most of the villages normally tend to ramble along winding roads, of a community that seems to be centred around the local manor house in Goodnestone Park. The Church is set right outside the gates to the Park with signs in evidence that no further entry beyond that particular point is permitted. However, it should be noted that the Park is open on certain weekends during the Spring and Summer. In the Spring there are extensive displays of hellebores. The Church has a prosperous look especially with its fine exterior walls of closely knapped flints. Inside, the Nave also has this same superior appearance with its high pointed ceiling. When I first visited this Church a year ago there were no copies of the Church history available. Fortunately, when I went to the Church again this year, there were just a few copies of the leaflet left. The building is a mixture with the inevitable Victorian restorations particularly to the Nave and Chancel. The oldest parts of the present Church are the North Aisle which is medieval and the base of the perpendicular tower which dates from the original Church which was constructed in the 12th Century. It was through the same door that I entered the Church and down the same aisle of the same Nave that Jane Austen would once have walked when she came to Goodnestone to visit her brother, Edward Austen Knight, at Rowling House. It has been suggested that Goodnestone House was the basis for the home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in "Pride and Prejudice". Also, It is here that we again encounter a certain Vicar, Richard Culmer, a.k.a. "Blue Dick" Culmer, who is listed as the encumbant here between the years 1630 to 1636 although I believe that he was actually suspended from this post between 1634 and 1635. There are several members of the Boys family remembered in the Church, including the Royalist Sir John Boys who, for 13 days defended Donnington Castle in Berkshire against a Cromwellian force of some 3,000. Mee in his book about Kent, reminds us that, in the 17th Century, there were eight branches of the Boys family living in Kent and there were actually three Sir John Boys alive at the same time. A real mine field for any genealogist with a connection to this family.
The WWI Memorial inside the Church. © PE Blanche 2001		The names on the Memorial to The Great War reads as follows: Frank Edward Amos 2nd Lieut. R.F.A. William H. Bartlett Royal Navy William J. Buddle   "    " Reginald Clements Liverpool Regt. Charles E. Gibbens R.F.A. John T. Kemp Loyal N. Lancs. William Knott Somerset L.I. Robert Hopkins E.K. Regt., the Buffs Henry J. Martin   "    " Thomas J. Martin   "    " Arthur Medgett   "    " Percy Millard   "    " Arthur Ralph   "    " Edward Ralph   "    " Alfred Sharp   "    " Horace Sayer Royal W. Kent

See also: Goodnestone Park