Tile Gazetteer - Kent

AYLESFORD

Aylesford Priory, normally known as The Friars, stands on the north bank of the Medway just west of Aylesford. Founded in 1242, it was one of the first two Carmelite houses in England, both of which were established in that year. Following the Dissolution the church was pulled down and part of the cloisters eventually became a mansion. In 1949 The Friars was put up for sale and the Carmelites were able to buy the house and return to their former home. The first Prior, Fr Malachy Lynch, began restoration of the buildings and in time The Friars became a pilgrimage centre. The architect Adrian Gilbert Scott, younger brother of Giles Gilbert Scott, was brought in to design the new church, comprising the Main Shrine and four radiating chapels, which was built in 1958-65 by a combination of Italian masons, local craftsmen and volunteers. Activities at The Friars, including furniture and pottery manufacture, printing and publishing (the Aylesford Review, a literary magazine, was published from 1955 to 1969) expressed the Catholic arts and crafts ideal. The pottery was set up in 1955 and run by David Leach, who lived at Aylesford for five years, with Br Michael as his assistant.[1]

The unique and moving ceramics which decorate the shrine and chapels are by the artist Adam Kossowski, who was born in Poland in 1905 (Fig 97). He studied architecture in Warsaw and painting in Cracow before working at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1929, where he became tutor in mural techniques. He was arrested by Soviet troops in 1939 and interned in labour camps until his release in 1942, eventually arriving in London in 1943. He initially worked for the Polish Ministry of Information, then with three other artists established a Decorative Arts Studio at Old Brompton Road in 1946. They exhibited at Heal’s in 1948, and the following year he showed ceramic figures in the Catholic Art Exhibition at the RIBA. In 1950 the sculptor Philip Lindsay-Clark, who had previously invited Kossowski to join the Guild of the Catholic Artists, introduced Adam Kossowski to Fr Malachy Lynch, who commissioned the artist to produce seven tempera paintings showing the history of the Aylesford Carmelites, for the Chapter Room; this was the start of an association which was to last until 1971.[2]

While work on the tempera paintings was still under way, Fr Malachy Lynch asked Kossowski to make a Rosary Way - a series of shrines illustrating the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary - in ceramics. Kossowski was hesitant as his only previous experience with the medium had been on a much smaller scale, but he produced the fifteen glazed high reliefs during 1950-1. Framed in oak and set on stone pedestals, these colourful images mark the stages along the Rosary Way, a pathway to the east of the Main Shrine; they are also a reminder of traditional Polish roadside shrines. In 1951 the relic of St Simon Stock, the English Carmelite, was brought back to Aylesford, and Kossowski began his next project, the massive Scapular Vision Shrine, which stands at the north-east corner of the Rosary Way and represents the Virgin Mary appearing to St Simon Stock. It was the largest ceramic composition he had undertaken, and was fired in the old kiln at the Fulham Pottery; a limited range of majolica glazes was used on unfired white clay. The shrine also included the first tiles (sculpted and irregular) Kossowski had ever produced.[3]

Between 1951 and the completion of construction of the Main Shrine, Kossowski worked at Aylesford only occasionally, but from the early 1960s until 1971 much of his time was devoted to The Friars (Fig 98). Eventually he produced more than one hundred individual works for Aylesford, carried out in mainly in ceramics but also in tempera, oil, mosaic, wrought iron and stained glass (Fig 99).[4] In the Main Shrine, which overlooks the piazza, a statue of the Glorious Virgin of the Assumption (by Michael Clark, son of Philip Lindsay-Clark, 1960) stands in a tall, arched niche lined with blue ceramic tiles designed by Kossowski and fired in The Friars pottery with the help of the Brothers and pottery workers. The angels on the side walls, including the Angel of Aylesford holding the shrine while standing above the village, were created using black slip and amber-orange translucent glaze; their strongly figurative composition and bold colour is characteristic of Kossowski’s work. The altar ceramics and candlesticks were also by Kossowski.

The decoration of St Anne’s Chapel, just to the right of the Main Shrine, was completed during 1961-3. Green sgraffito murals with ceramic reliefs including high-flying angels are complemented by a floor of 2,000 green, grey and black glazed tiles, fired at The Friars. A corridor leads north from the Main Shrine towards the Relic Chapel, which is dominated by one of Kossowski’s favourite Aylesford works, the Reliquary of St Simon Stock (1963-4), an astonishing black and white ceramic tower twelve feet in height. The body of the tower is concrete, its tiled exterior representing the hermits’ cells of Mount Carmel. There is also a ceramic relief altar frontal in red glaze on black, the fourteen Stations of the Cross (1963-6) and an additional ‘fifteenth station’, the Empty Tomb (1966). Leading east from the Relic Chapel is the Chapel of the Carmelite Saints, decorated during 1964-5, while to the west is the Chapel of the English Martyrs (1965-7), the most atmospheric of these magical spaces, its intensity deriving from ceramic reliefs in red glaze on dark blue ground along with highly coloured glass.

Kossowski’s final contribution to The Friars was in St Joseph’s Chapel, west of the Main Shrine, where the decoration was carried out in 1966-71. Figurative panels march across the walls whilst the focus is the altar, backed by a ceramic relief representing the universal church and standing on a superb tile pavement showing the four symbols of the evangelists, in ceramic sgraffito on green tiles. Here the eagle and the winged ox, lion and man are not just mere symbols but powerful images in their own right, outstanding in the totality of Kossowski’s work at The Friars, which is one of the most compelling twentieth-century ceramic visions in Britain. Kossowski’s work as a ceramicist ceased when he had to abandon his massive studio in 1971; he died in 1986 and was interred at Aylesford.

CHATHAM

Towards the west end of the High Street is the site of the former Theatre Royal, designed by the Rochester architect George Edward Bond and built in 1897-9. Its interior had tiling as good as any theatre in Britain, with a series of hand-painted pictorial panels of Shakespearean characters and the Greek Muses set into cream dado tiling along the corridors and stairs leading to the stalls and royal circle (Fig 100). The pictorial panels were interspersed with panels bearing a floral motif, which appear in a catalogue produced by George Wooliscroft and Sons, and there was other, less decorative tilework throughout the building, including chequerwork wall tiles in the balcony bar. One pictorial panel was signed ‘W. Lambert 1899’, and as Lambert is known to have painted two large tile panels in 1896 on Wooliscroft tiles, it is very probable that the Theatre Royal’s pictorial panels were also manufactured by George Wooliscroft and Sons. Tiles from Pilkington’s and the Marsden Tile Co have also been identified from the theatre, so the architect and builders appear to have used the products of a wide range of manufacturers.

The theatre closed in 1955 and was sold in 1956. Under constant threat of demolition, the fabric deteriorated and the proscenium opening was bricked up. The Theatre Royal Chatham Trust Ltd was formed in 1992 to work towards reopening the building as a live theatre, and initially made good progress. A large area of tilework survived the years of neglect, including several pictorial panels, although three were removed and are on display at the Guildhall Museum, Rochester. However, in 2003 the Trust had to sell the building and by mid 2004 the interior had deteriorated considerably; at the time of writing it seems likely that the structure will be demolished.

At the east end of the High Street is the former Fountain Inn, now the bookmakers William Hill; it was probably built in the 1890s and ceased to be a pub around 1980 (Fig 101). Inside its lofty porch is full-height wall tiling, with panels of colourful relief tiles and a very delicately painted blue and white fountain, flanked by a pair of urns, on white ground; it could well have been made by Mintons China Works. Similar tiling exists in the former entrance on the other side of the building, although this is now concealed behind boarding. The porch tiles are all that remain of a fine ceramic interior, which included a mosaic floor and two tiled bars. In Richard Street, which runs slightly south of and parallel to the High Street, is the Shipwright’s Arms. This small pub has a good, probably early Edwardian, faience facade in mostly green and gold advertising the ‘Burton Ales’ and ‘London Porter and Stout’ of brewers Truman Hanbury Buxton & Co.

From the centre of Chatham, Dock Road runs north to the Dockyard, whose Main Gate (1720) bears an impressively large and colourful relief of the Royal Arms. This well-preserved example of a Coade stone Royal Arms dates from 1812 and is signed Coade & Sealy. Beyond is Chatham Historic Dockyard and one of the few locations where eighteenth century English delftware tiles have been preserved in situ: the ‘blue loo’ in the Commissioner’s House. This little room provides an intensely blue experience as the walls are completely tiled, floor to ceiling, with delftware tiles; the loo itself is also blue on white. The tiles were made in London around 1760-90 and show a variety of landscape scenes. The room was conserved by Heritage Tile Conservation Ltd in 1990, who removed a complete wall of tiles which was in danger of falling off due to a combination of dry rot and rising damp. The tiles were then restored before being refixed after remedial work to the wall.

DEAL

In and around Ranelagh Road, towards the south end of Deal, is a unique set of extravagantly tiled tall terrace houses in an area which used to be naval docks, but was infilled and the houses built from the 1880s onward. They display all manner of tiles, in lancet-shaped panels below the eaves, horizontal panels between ground and first floor windows and vertical installations beside the sash windows. There are large plaques which almost seem to take the place of windows, as well as tiles on gateposts and in encaustic pavements. There are several examples from the Minton Hollins hand-coloured transfer printed Birds series, and art nouveau style lettered tiles reading ‘Southampton Terrace’, and the variety of tiles - from heavily relief-moulded fruit to transfer printed to majolica to encaustic, mostly by Maw’s and Minton Hollins - is enormous. These houses were built at a time of prosperity, while Deal was still the naval equivalent of a garrison town, but nowhere else in the town is there showy external tiling, clearly a part of the original architectural conception, on this scale.

DOVER

In the centre of Dover is the Market Square and an excellent turn-of-the-century public house, the Sir John Falstaff. Its mainly buff and brown faience facade, striped in the lower part, is topped by heavily moulded consoles bearing grotesques. There is also lavish decorative tiling inside the pub. North to Castle Street, which is connected to the waterfront by means of a pedestrian underpass beneath the dual carriageway. This unpromising location was transformed in 1993 by Tessera, whose expansive tile mural covers the entire wall area. The theme is shipping through the ages, the colours a maritime red, white and blue, and the effect appropriate.

The church of St Mary in the Castle stands above and to the north-east of the town on Castle Hill, just south of Dover Castle. The late Saxon church was restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1860-2, then in 1888-9 William Butterfield carried out the chancel decoration, with its flowing scrolls of mosaic on the upper part of the walls and elaborate tilework elsewhere. The tiling includes Butterfield’s typical bright yellow zigzag motif.

FOLKESTONE

In Tontine Street, right in the centre of Folkestone, is the splendid Brewery Tap, its late Victorian faience and tile facade proclaiming the merits of Mackeson’s Hythe Ales. The pub was originally the brewery tap of Langton’s Brewery, also situated in Tontine Street, but this firm was taken over by Mackeson’s of Hythe in 1886; the pub doubtless acquired its new facade shortly after this date. To the west of the town centre, The Leas runs along the cliffs past Leas Cliff Hall, a neo-classical theatre designed by J. L. Seaton Dahl in 1913 and built in 1925-7 from reinforced concrete partly clad in faience. Little can be seen at clifftop level but the entrance (added in 1980); however, to the rear, and with superb sea views, a series of broad, glazed terraces runs down the cliffside.

GRAVESEND

Gravesend was the first port of note downriver from London, and was a popular destination for day-trippers from the capital. Not surprisingly the town is well endowed with pubs, several of which have tile and faience facades; the best remaining example is the Trocadero in Windmill Street, in the town centre. Here a deep central bow window is flanked by wall tiling at each side entrance bearing the pub’s name and signed Millington & Co, 139 Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Millington’s was a firm of shopfitters who also produced stained glass and probably decorated the Trocadero tiles themselves. The route down to the riverside passes along The Terrace, where the lustrous green and white faience facade of the Terrace Tavern advertises the gloriously-named ‘Shrimp Brand Beers’ produced by local brewery Russell’s (Fig 102). Unusually, the lettering also includes what appears to be the name of the licensee, T. A. Hooper.

On Gordon Promenade, beside the Thames, is the delightful Promenade Café and its petite ice cream kiosk, both probably erected in the 1930s and completely faced in large creamy-yellow and black ceramic tiles. Behind the café is Gordon Park, where the larger-than-life Doulton terracotta figure of General Gordon can be found mounted upon a tall pedestal; General Charles George ‘Chinese’ Gordon (1833-85) was born in Gravesend (Fig 103). The statue, commissioned by George M. Arnold, Mayor of Gravesend in 1897, was unveiled in 1893 and bears the marks Broad - the sculptor was John Broad - and Doulton. Arnold also donated the Doulton statue of Queen Victoria (1897-8, John Broad) which can be found west of the railway station in Darnley Road. Doulton’s originally sent a faulty statue of Queen Victoria, and this can still be seen in the Borough Market House, Princes Street.

KEMSING

The topographical artist Donald Maxwell (1877-1936) wanted to make a permanent record of every town and village in his adopted county, Kent. He experimented with hand-painting scenes on tiles at the Pembury Glazed Tile Company, but eventually his ‘clay etchings’ were produced during 1933-6 by Doulton’s of Lambeth as the Domesday (or Maxwell) Tile series. Maxwell worked with Doulton’s Art Director, Joseph Mott, to perfect the reproduction process in which Maxwell’s etched copper plate sketches were transferred to the earthenware tile surface, the colours then being painted in by Annie Lyons and Doris Johnson.[5] The full ceramic ‘modern Domesday Book of Kent’ was never completed, but there were fifty-four different tile designs, including two showing Kemsing. Two of the Domesday Tiles, as well as other tiles relating to the village, may be seen inside Kemsing Church.[6]

MARGATE

East of Margate’s centre the promenade rises to Newgate and eventually crosses Newgate Gap, a mini-gorge which leads to some of the town’s famous caves. The promenader’s route lies across Newgate Bridge, erected by the Borough of Margate to commemorate its fiftieth jubilee and opened in 1907; this jolly little seaside structure was built from steel with faience facing. Cream Doulton Carraraware is combined with blue and green faience insets in an attractive design which includes octagonal corner turrets; the bridge is a listed building, although that did not stop its closure in 2000 due to its dangerous condition, a sad state for an unusual example of integral colour in a building.

Back in the town centre, the view across the harbour takes in that icon of the seaside, the Dreamland Cinema on Marine Terrace. The cinema which gave us the phrase ‘Meet me tonight in Dreamland’ is a steel-framed, mostly brick, structure built in 1935; its fantastic fin tower is an effective landmark, but the faience panels of its facade are barely visible now. It was designed by the specialist cinema architects Julian Leathart and W. F. Granger, and its audacious tower went on to become the model for many Odeons, which often featured much more faience. In Station Road, just inland from the cinema, is the Railway Station, a substantial neo-classical pile built in 1926 to cater for the vast numbers of trippers heading towards Dreamland and the beach; the architect was probably Edwin Maxwell Fry of the Southern Railway. The exterior is executed in a stone-like, almost matt grey faience, and includes a frieze of pictorial roundel reliefs depicting locomotives and other railway scenes. To the west of the centre on the Canterbury Road stands the former Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, whose polychrome brick chapel (architect James Knowles) was added in 1883; an encaustic tiled pavement runs through the sanctuary, choir and central nave aisle.

NORTHFLEET

St Botolph’s Church was restored by the architect and designer E. W. Godwin in 1862. His work included the design of an elaborate encaustic tile chancel pavement which incorporates several green-glazed tiles in nine-tile and sixteen-tile groups; there is also an uncommon ‘running hare’ motif. He also produced tile designs for the lower part of the chancel walls, depicting St Botolph kneeling before a canopied throne and holding a crown.[7]

Perry Street

All Saints Church was designed by James Brooks and built in 1869-70; its chancel and sanctuary have an encaustic tiled pavement by Maw & Co.

RAMSGATE

The first port of call in Ramsgate must be The Grange, the home of A. W. N. Pugin from 1844 until his death in 1852; it stands in St Augustine’s Road, at the west end of the town (Fig 104). Pugin was drawn to Ramsgate, then a respectable, middle class seaside resort, for several reasons: he stayed there with his aunt after his mother died in 1833, he loved sailing and the sea, and there was a strong connection with his patron saint, St Augustine of Canterbury. He bought the plot of land in 1843 then designed and built The Grange, which he saw as the basis of a Catholic community, during 1843-4. Its severe, buff brick exterior is enlivened only by the lookout tower from which Pugin could watch the goings-on at sea, while the interior is a highly functional family home. Pugin’s second wife died in 1844, but by 1851 he had remarried and the household comprised Pugin, his wife Jane, five children and four servants.[8]

Although the house appears rather gloomy from the north, all the main reception rooms on the south (and garden) side have a sea view; Pugin did his work in the library and there was a small chapel at the east end of the garden range. Decoration inside the house included Minton encaustic floor tiles in the entrance staircase hall, some of which still remain. Here criss-cross rows of plain black tiles surround groups of four tiles, two bearing Pugin’s monogram and two with his crest, which included a martlet. The martlet is an heraldic representation of a martin or swallow without feet, thus a bird which never rests.

As soon as The Grange was complete Pugin began work on St Augustine’s Church, which stands immediately east of the house. Despite being funded wholly by Pugin, he always intended that it should benefit the local religious community, and in it he was able, for once, to incorporate his own ‘True Principles’ of architecture, being his own ‘paymaster and architect’. It was built between 1845 and 1852, and was not quite complete even at his death. Pugin also bought land on the opposite side of St Augustine’s Road in 1849, although the community was not extended to the north until 1860-1 when St Augustine’s Abbey was built by E. W. Pugin for local Benedictine monks; it is connected to the church by a tunnel beneath the road.

The main entrance to the church, now known as St Augustine’s Abbey Church, is at the north-west corner of the cloister; around the cloister are brightly painted terracotta Stations of the Cross, erected in 1893 and made by the De Beule brothers of Ghent. Before the Altar of the Sacred Heart are encaustic tiles depicting dice (which the centurions threw for the robe of Jesus) and the story of the raven carrying away poisoned bread which was fed to St Augustine. The interior of the church is faced with Whitby sandstone, its tones varying from grey to yellow. Puginian brilliance of colour arises from the fittings, including many Minton’s patterned encaustic tiles, for instance in the chancel and Lady Chapel. The tomb of A. W. N. Pugin lies in the Pugin Chantry (above the family vault), which is entered through a screen. The floor tiles around the base of the tomb, which was made in 1852-3, were specially produced by Minton and - apart from the martlet and other personal symbols - bear the legend ‘Pray for the soul of Augustus Welby Pugin the founder of this church’.

The Pugin family remained at The Grange until the death of Cuthbert Pugin, last surviving son of A. W. N. Pugin, in 1928. The church continued as a working church, and is now both an abbey and a parish church. Although The Grange was purchased by the monastery in 1931, it suffered many years of neglect, remaining empty and unrepaired until taken on by the Landmark Trust in 2002 for restoration and future use as a holiday home.

Beside the harbour, in the centre of Ramsgate, the Queen’s Head, all ornate green and yellow faience, looks out across the water from Harbour Parade. In its spectacular frontage a carriage entrance is set beside a broad archway, topped by a faience-floored balcony and enclosing a deep bay though which one may enter the pub, although there are also doorways at either side (Fig 105). The excellent faience detailing includes circular lamp-holders in the side porch ceilings. The interior is tiled to dado level with brown relief tiling which runs around and a brown faience fireplace. The pub’s faience has been restored by Shaws of Darwen, who also worked on the neighbouring domed red terracotta Custom House (1893-4). Overlooking the harbour from the rear is the Royal Sailors Rest, built as a sailors’ hostel in 1904 by the Royal British and Foreign Sailors’ Society; its impressive buff terracotta pilasters stretch the full height of the building.

RIVERHEAD

The decoration of the sanctuary of St Mary’s Church (1831), London Road was carried out in opus sectile by Powell’s of Whitefriars, apart from a central mosaic figure in the reredos which was executed by Salviati; this dates from 1894. In 1909 Powells supplied opus sectile figures of angels for the reredos (from a sketch by A. F. Coakes, one of the firm’s leading designers, and cartoons by Charles Hardgrave) at a cost of £130, then in 1911 provided four evangelists (by W. C. Hodges), also for the reredos. The south sanctuary wall was decorated in 1912, and finally the north wall in 1916, both with opus sectile figures of old testament characters.[9]

ROCHESTER

The present buildings of Rochester Cathedral, which lies just off the High Street, date largely from the twelfth century. Medieval tiles, some with patterns still visible, remain in the north transept and the south choir transept, but far more dramatic is the Godwin encaustic tile pavement in the presbytery, installed by Sir George Gilbert Scott during his restoration work which took place around 1870 (Fig 106). Many of the tile designs were copied from those of the Cathedral’s medieval tiles, but towards the altar step the tiling grows increasingly elaborate, climaxing with a stunning circular arrangement (normally covered by carpet) including the Signs of the Zodiac. In front of the altar a series of tile roundels represent the Seven Virtues, and either side of the altar are two roundels of jaunty angels each bearing a banner inscribed ‘Alleluia’. Also in the Cathedral is the monument to Lady Anne Henniker (d1793) with Coade stone figures of Truth and Father Time, the latter apparently designed by the sculptor Thomas Banks (1735-1805); it is his only known work for the Coade firm.[10]

Head up Boley Hill, which runs south of the Cathedral, and continue into St Margaret’s Street to find the Church of St Margaret of Antioch. Its chancel, added in 1839-40, has complete floor tiling dating from the 1870s. Further out of town in Maidstone Road is St John Fisher R. C. Church, designed by the architect H. S. Goodhart-Rendel and opened in 1955 (although not consecrated until 1979). Because of its durability, at that time Goodhart-Rendel favoured tile decoration, and commissioned Carter & Co to produce a ceramic reredos for the church. The design work was undertaken by Joseph Ledger (b1926), who carried out this type of commission for Carter’s from the early 1950s until his departure to become Design Director of Royal Doulton in 1955. He also designed the reredos for Goodhart-Rendel’s Church of St Mary the Virgin, Hounslow, completed in 1955, and (in 1966, while at Doulton’s) the east wall decoration of the same architect’s Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, City of Westminster, opened in 1963. The hand-painting for all these commissions was done by Phyllis Butler in a special section set up by Carter’s.[11] The St John Fisher reredos depicts the figure of St John Fisher surrounded by other saints significant in Rochester’s history, including St Benedict and St Andrew.

TUNBRIDGE WELLS

The former children’s ward of the Kent and Sussex Hospital (1932-4), Mount Ephraim, contains a contemporary tile scheme designed by Carter’s of Poole. It comprised twenty separate panels showing a wide variety of animals running along the walls towards a large Noah’s Ark panel at the end of the ward; the brightly-coloured panels were hand-painted on to a slip outline. Carter’s were so proud of the scheme that these animal studies featured in their 1935 publicity leaflet Carter Picture Tiles for Hospitals. The panels were boarded over in 1965 but rediscovered in 1984 during building work.

WICKHAMBREAUX

St Andrew’s Church, on The Green, is best known for its American-designed east window, a dramatic art nouveau piece by Arild Rosenkrantz depicting the Annunciation. It dates from 1896 and was carried out in semi-opaque glass, which adds to the striking visual effect. Beneath the window, the altar is framed by rich, deep brown wall tiling that continues throughout the chancel. It probably dates from the 1868 restoration, along with the brightly coloured chancel tile pavement.

Kent Roundup

The thirteenth century floor tiles at Holy Innocents Church, Adisham have all been lifted and reset amongst plain black and red nineteenth century tiles; the chancel is dominated by late Victorian wall tiling, comprising repeats of two yellow, orange and grey floral motifs on rectangular tiles. The Victorian chancel encaustic pavement at St Mary’s Church, Bishopsbourne includes a ‘green man’ and other designs copied from medieval Penn tiles, some of which remain in the church. In the churchyard of St Peter’s Church in St Peter’s village, Broadstairs is a First World War memorial comprising a panel of pale grey rectangular glazed tiles on which the names of the casualties appear in black. The fine sanctuary pavement at St Mary’s Church, Brook consists of fourteenth century tiles forming circles and other patterns. In Canterbury, Tyler Hill medieval tiles may be found in the Jesus Chapel of the Cathedral, in a three-tile wide panel reset along a step. There is elaborate terracotta detailing on the former almshouses (1889), restored in 1980 as housing, in Lowfield Street, Dartford. The designs of the striking Victorian encaustic floor tiles at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Ickham are all based on medieval examples from Tyler Hill. There is ornate floor tiling in the chancel of Christ Church (1839-41), Kilndown, a favourite of the Ecclesiologists. There are nineteenth century floor tiles in the Queen’s Room of Leeds Castle, brought from France by a former owner’s wife; their motifs include a stag’s head, representing St Hubert. The Victorian tile pavement in the chancel of St Clement’s Church, Knightrider Street, Sandwich is copied from the designs of fourteenth century Tyler Hill and Penn tiles remaining in the church. There is a good display of glass tile and mosaic panels, mostly by Powell’s of Whitefriars, at St James Church, Staple. The chancel decoration of St Mary’s Church (1868-9, architect Arthur Blomfield), Vicarage Road, Strood includes polychromatic brickwork, Salviati mosaics and tiled floors. Inside the White Oak Indoor Bowls Centre, Hilda May Avenue, Swanley is a mosaic triptych (1992) of bowling scenes by Oliver Budd. In the chancel of All Saints Church, West Stourmouth is a good geometric pavement in red and yellow diamond-shaped tiles.

The following churches have small installations of medieval tiles: St Peter and St Paul, Appledore; St Lawrence, Bapchild; St Augustine, Brookland; St Mary Magdalene, Cobham; St Catherine, Preston, in Faversham; All Saints, Graveney; St John the Baptist, Harrietsham; St Mary, Lamberhurst; St Margaret, Lower Halstow; St Mary, Newington (near Sittingbourne); St Nicholas, New Romney; St Mary, Selling; St Mary the Virgin, Stone; St Mary the Virgin, Upchurch; St John the Baptist, West Wickham.

References

1.^         Rosemary Hill, 'Prior Commitment', Crafts, (2001) 172, pp28-31.
2.^         Adam Kossowski: Murals and Paintings, (Armelle Press, London, 1990).
3.^         Image of Carmel: The Art of Aylesford, (Carmelite Friars of Aylesford, 2000).
4.^         James H. Sephton, The Friars Aylesford (Sephton, Aylesford, 1999).
5.^         Desmond Eyles and Louise Irvine, The Doulton Lambeth Wares (Richard Dennis, Shepton Beauchamp, 2002).
6.^         Michael Ffinch, Donald Maxwell 1877-1936 (Maxwell Estate, Kendal, 1995).
7.^         Catherine Arbuthnott, E. W. Godwin and Ceramics, in E. W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer, ed Susan Weber Soros, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1999), pp297-311.
8.^         Libby Horner and Gill Hunter, A Flint Seaside Church: St Augustine's Abbey Church, Ramsgate (Pugin Society, Ramsgate, 2000).
9.^         Dennis W. Hadley, James Powell & Sons: A listing of opus sectile, 1847-1973, (2001).
10.^       Alison Kelly, Mrs Coade's Stone (Self Publishing Association, Upton-upon-Severn, 1990).
11.^       Jennifer Hawkins, Poole Potteries (Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1980), p190.