Stansted in The King's England, Kent by Arthur Mee

Stansted. It stands with smiling hills all round, with an exceptional war memorial, a splendid nude youth, in bronze, at the meeting of the roads. Two bells ring out from the old church tower, one of them among the oldest in Kent. "His name is John", it says.

The church is a rare little place- The porch has two tiny slot windows, the chancel has a dainty timbered roof, and there is a small quatrefoil window in the west wall. Two curious glazed tiles, probably from the Wrotham pottery, let into the walls are in memory of the son and daughter of Edward Wooden, both of whom died in 1638, and a brass of c. 1510 is to John Skudder,whose name is kept green by the beautiful house of that name at Fawkham nearby. Laid to rest here not long, ago was a chorister who sang in this choir for 67 years.

In the churchyard is the grave of Sir Sydney Waterlow, with angels over it. At one end of the monument is a medallion of Sir Sydney looking across to the grave of a devoted servant, and there are two lead medallions expressive of great sorrow. One shows a workman with his bag of tools thrown down and two delightful children hailing him, with a shadowy figure of one lost, and the other shows the parents mourning the lost one.

But it is by the old yew near the tower that the imagination is stirred in this churchyard, for here lies a heap of broken masonry, flint rubble overgrown with grass. There was a church here soon after the Conqueror came, and 600 or 700 years ago they pulled it down to build this one. They built it well, for nowhere are flints squared up and shaped and set more neatly. But these workmen left their rubbish heap behind them; these masses of flint are from the church they pulled down, and they have lain where they left them while the old yew has grown from a sapling and the centuries have come and gone. Such at any rate is the story.

A little more than a mile on the road to Ash stands an old house with wattle and daub in its walls, the primitive form of building with hazel twigs interlaced and filled in with mud and straw. The Old Malt House, which all may see, has still this reinforced mud in its walls, and had been made beautiful with a new thatch when we called, a sturdy place again after its 500 years.

Taken from The King's England, Kent by Arthur Mee. First published 1939. The copy in the library in Longfield is the 1974 edition.