page_title: St. Mary's Church, Goudhurst
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St. Mary's Church, Goudhurst / History
caption_attribution_description: Dates from 12th Century and probably back to Saxon times. Much stained glass was destroyed by a bomb in World war II. The church contains a fine tomb to Sir Alexander Culpepper, plus brasses from the 15th Century.
context_page_description: The Church of St. Mary the Virgin is the 13th-century Anglican parish church for the village of Goudhurst in Kent. The church has been a Grade I listed building since 1967 and comes under the Diocese of Canterbury.
  The church stands on a hill and its tower commands impressive views of the surrounding countryside.
  For this reason it was a major surveying point in the Anglo-French Survey to measure the precise distance and relationship between the Paris Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory, supervised by General William Roy.
context_section_description: The first mention we have of a church at Goudhurst is in 1119 when Robert de Crevecoeur gave his church at Goudhurst to Leeds Priory at Leeds in Kent. This St Mary’s church would have been a small building probably covering the site of the present South chapel and part of the South aisle. At this time the monks at Combwell Priory acted as chaplains. It was not until about 1300 that one of them signed himself Peter – the Vicar.
caption: View down the nave towards the east
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