TR0848 : Benchmark, Church of St Mary
taken 4 years ago, near to Crundale, Kent, England
Grade I listed.
The church of St Mary is some distance from the actual village of Crundale. It dates from the 12th century onwards. There is a nave, north aisle and chancel, a north tower with tiny spirelet, and north porch. There was possibly a south chapel also.
The basic fabric of the church dates from the Norman period. The north aisle was created in the 12th century with two round headed arches being cut through the nave wall .There is a large inscribed slab to John Sprott, Rector, dated 1466. It was originally in the chancel.
The top of the tower was rebuilt in brick in the 18th Century. There are three bells the oldest from 1593.
The church was restored in 1894 by Loftus Brock.
The term benchmark, originates from the chiselled horizontal marks that surveyors made in stone structures, into which an angle-iron could be placed to form a "bench" for a levelling rod, thus ensuring that a levelling rod could be accurately repositioned in the same place in future. These marks were usually indicated with a chiselled arrow below the horizontal line.
The height of a benchmark is calculated relative to the heights of nearby benchmarks in a network extending from a fundamental benchmark, a point with a precisely known relationship to the level datum of the area, typically mean sea level. The position and height of each benchmark is shown on large-scale maps.