Churches of the British Isles

Sandwich (First) Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was on the western side of King Street, about fifty metres to the north of the Galliard St junction. Although much converted today, this building is at least in part the old chapel. The first version was built in the late seventeenth century and was visited by John Wesley in 1788. He implies that the early meeting room was small but, in the mid-1800s, it was replaced or rebuilt. The New Street chapel (above) replaced it in 1874.

St Clement's Church is on Knightrider Street in Sandwich, to the south of the junction with Sandown Road. The town contains three churches which gave their names to the old parishes, and Sandwich remained divided into three parishes until comparatively recently. Adjoining the town's ramparts, the church was originally built in a characteristically Norman cruciform plan in the twelfth century when Sandwich was becoming a royal harbour of some importance.

The church was aisless, but with the massive stone central tower and the east and west part of the nave. The tower is one of the finest in England - the pillars which support it have rounded arches and curiously carved capitals with various ornamentations of scrolls, frets, foliage, and grotesque figures. In the thirteenth century the chancel was rebuilt with a north chapel using flint and sandstone, and some Caen stone, and in the fourteenth century a south chapel was added.

The St Margaret and St George chapels between them contain a complete medieval tiled floor, plus a statue of St John taken from Lincoln Cathedral by the Puritans. The spire and defensive battlements were taken down between 1670-1673, and the nineteenth century Dutch residents were allowed to perform divine service here on the payment of forty shillings a year. The town's three parishes were united in 1948, and St Clement's became the single parish church.

The Catholic Church of St Andrew sits at the bottom of St George's Road. It was built in the early 1960s to provide a space to worship for Catholics in Sandwich. The town was always a stronghold for nonconformists, and it supported the right of its populace to worship in their own way. Following the English Reformation, Catholics were amongst the last to return here, with a congregation being formed only after the First World War in this inter-war utility-style construction.

All photos on this page by P L Kessler & M Kessler in 2010 & 2025.