No one can ever have come, whether by the Pilgrims' Road or another,
into the little hill-village of Chilham, into the piazza there, which
is an acropolis, without delight. It is one of the surprises of
England, a place at once so little, so charming and so unexpected that
it is extraordinary it is not more famous. It stands at a point where
more than one little valley breaks down into the steep valley of the
Stour and every way to it is up hill, under what might seem to be old
ramparts crowned now with cottages and houses, till suddenly you find
yourself at the top in a large piazza or square closed at the end by
the church, at the other by the castle, and on both sides by old lines
of houses; really a walled _place_.
The church dedicated in honour of Our Lady is of some antiquity in the
main and older parts, a work of the fourteenth century replacing
doubtless Roman, Saxon and Norman buildings, but with later additions,
too, of the Perpendicular time in the clerestory, for instance, and
with much modern work in the chancel. Of old the place belonged to the
alien Priory of Throwley in this county, itself a cell of the Abbey of
St Omer, in Artois; but when these alien houses were suppressed,
Chilham like Throwley itself went to the new house of Syon, founded by
the King.
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