St Peter & St Paul, Church Road, Ash, Kent, TN15 7HD.

The Domesday Book (1086) records the names of almost all the present hilltop parishes, but mentions churches only at Fawkham, Meopham, Nursted and Luddesdown. The Norman churches still surviving at Ridley, Hartley, and West Kingsdown must, therefore, have been built within the ensuing century; it is pretty likely that Ash also had a Norman church. Nothing as early as that remains at Ash, for the chancel and the tower date from the thirteenth century, and the nave was rebuilt in its present spacious form with aisles in the later Middle Ages.

After the Reformation, when side altars in churches were out of use, the leading local families frequently appropriated side chapels as burial places. The Hodsolls, whose late medieval house still survives, are buried in adjacent tombs in the centre of the nave: William Hodsoll of Southashe, gent, who died in 1586, and another William, who died in 1616. Thereafter, the Hodsolls took over the Lady Chapel, where a splendid array of finely lettered ledger slabs are on the floor; these are included in the photo gallery below.