St Mary Magdalene

red tiled roof with patterned tiles to the tower roof.

The Willement porch is timber-framed and tile-hung with fancy pierced bargeboards and re-used C15 timber moulded jambs with blind quatrefoils above urn stops.

The west end of the church has a richly-decorated C12 west doorway with some restoration but the carved decoration is apparently untouched.

It is unclear when the north-west tower was demolished but there is a reference to it having a single tower in 1692.

Pointed chamfered arches to north and south on the east wall, now blind, once gave access to the former eastern arm of the church through what was a stone rood screen.

A C12 doorway on the south side formerly led into the north cloister walk.

Medieval timbers are thought to survive above the plaster (information from the incumbent).

One of the south side windows (now internal as a result of the development of the house) has two bays of C12 style arcading across the embrasure

Willement timber drum pulpit on an octagonal stem incorporates C17 panels of the Resurrection and 4 evangelists.

Fine Caen stone font dated 1847 by John Thomas with a semi-circular bowl carved with figures on a short stem with waterleaf decoration at the base.

Willement stained glass, perhaps his best work, the triple lancet with figure scenes from the life of Christ in medallions, the aisle windows including the symbols of the evangelists.

HISTORY: the Church of St Mary Magdalene is sited on Davington Hill, above the town of Faversham, and is unusual in that it was originally the church of St Magdalene's Priory, founded as a Benedictine nunnery in 1153.

The priory had 26 nuns at its foundation, but was never formally dissolved in the Henrician Dissolution as there were no nuns left by 1536.

In 1546 the priory was sold by the Crown to Sir Thomas Cheyne, treasurer of Henry VIII's household.

The nave of the church was not dismantled as it was used for parish worship, although the choir was demolished in 1580.

In 1845 the antiquarian and stained glass artist, Thomas Willement, an important figure in the Gothic Revival, purchased the remains of the priory (where he developed the private house, Davington Priory, constructed out of the west range of the priory cloister, separately listed Grade II*) and undertook extensive restoration of the church.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: originally built as the church for the Benedictine Davington Priory, the Church of St Mary Magdalene is a fine, if austere, example of late-Norman ecclesiastical architecture.

Much of its C12 fabric remains and it retains part of its cloister in the form of Davington Priory house.

The Victorian restoration of the church (and the house) by Thomas Willement, an authority on heraldry, stained glass artist and associate of Pugin and Salvin, is of great interest in the history of the Gothic Revival, not least because Willement described it in his `Historical Sketch of the Parish of Davington, in the County of Kent and of the Priory there' Sources Pevsner, North East and East Kent, 1983, 279-280 'St Mary Magdalene and St Lawrence, Davington', Sheet of information in the church, n.d.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Stanley A Shepherd), Willement, Thomas , writer on heraldry and stained-glass artist, 2004-2005