Otford - St Bartholomews
Another in the ever expanding Church Micro Series, started by Sadexploration.
St Bartholomews Church is a small low church with a massive squat tower. It dates from 1060 with the tower added in 1175.
Inside the chancel is dominated by a very large monument to Charles Polhill and there is an excellent 16th century Easter Sepulchre tomb. Thomas Becket was Chaplain here and later, as Archbishop, resided at Otford Palace. There is a legend that, on finding his house needed a well, he struck the ground with his staff and water issued forth.
The nave dates from the later part of the 11th century and much of its north and west walls survive, including the north-east and north-west quoins. A blocked original splayed window has been found towards the west end. The walling is of courses of whole flint ironstone and some ragstone with quoins of reused Roman brick, tufa and flint, ironstone and ragstone.
In the late 12th century the western tower, with thick walls, was added. Externally it is entirely covered in cement render, but inside one can see deeply-splayed round-headed windows to the north and south, and a pointed tower arch into the west end of the nave made of Reigate stone. The west doorway into the tower seems to have been removed when the 1637 porch was built.
The church seems to have been badly gutted by fire in c. 1630, and various traces of burning can be seen internally. As a result of this, all the rather spindly roofs were rebuilt soon afterwards and a series of large posts were put in between the nave and south aisle (these survived until 1863). The chancel arch seems also to have been destroyed at this time.
A new timber staircase was put into the south-east corner of the tower in c. 1635, and the fine new timber porch was put up outside the west tower in 1637 (dated at the apex of the west gable). The upper part of the tower, which seems to have some brickwork behind the cement render, and has a small crenellated parapet also dating to this time, as does perhaps the squat shingled spire.
This cache replaces an earlier Church Micro by biancajules - GC36PHW
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At the given coordinates you are standing in front of the church. Underneath the clock on the end of the building there is a wooden structure with a date in the top of the gable - ABCD. The cache, a bison tube can be found at :
N51 18. D (C-A) (C+A) E000 11. B B (D-C)
Puzzle updated 19 October 2024, due to original information going missing.
Please make sure the cache is well hidden.
***** Congratulations to Rivrd on the FTF *****
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the
Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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