This cruciform church (with a western tower) is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, and seems to have been founded during the Norman period. Its aisles were added towards the close of the twelfth century; the chancel assumed its present form during the thirteenth century; and chantries were founded in its transepts late in the fourteenth century, when the well-sculptured effigies of a knight and a priest were deposited in the south and north transepts respectively. It is remarkable that so handsome a church, only five miles from Canterbury, was overlooked by Sir Stephen Glynne; merely mentioned, without any description, by the Rev. A. Hussey; and passed without any notice by the Rev. Philip Parsons, in his Monuments in One Hundred Churches of East Kent, 1794. Murray's Handbook of Kent also omits to mention Ickham.

THE TOWER AND BELLS.
   A church existed here in A.D. 1086, when the Domesday survey was taken; but of Norman architecture the western doorway of the tower is the only discernible relic; and it can scarcely be considered to be of earlier date than the twelfth century. It has small angle shafts, and its arch is carved with an embattled moulding, surmounted by the billet. The tower itself seems to have been reconstructed (when aisles were added to the nave) about the end of the twelfth century. It has neither stair-turret nor buttresses; its windows are of lancet shape, and its eastern arch is pointed. The clock and the shingled spire, which cost £534, were added in 1870, at the expense of Mr. S. Musgrave Hilton, of Bramling. Sixty years ago, there was a very small spire on the tower;