{32}
Establishing the pre- or post-reformation nature of the churches on an OS sheet can be a tedious business. We feel it would be useful to outline our procedure here, as it may be of use to other researchers.
Most of Sheet 188 lies in Kent. Accordingly we first extracted all the pre-reformation churches in Kent from the lists of churches and their dates given in Arnold-Forster [11]. We assumed all the pre-reformation churches in Kent to be included in Arnold-Forster’s lists. Secondly, we noted the place name associated with each pre-reformation Kent church, and looked them up in the index of the Ordnance Survey Atlas of Great Britain. This index gives a grid reference for the majority of places, and from these it is easy to check whether a particular place falls on Sheet 188. This accounts for most of the pre-reformation churches, but there are some ambiguities and puzzles left outstanding, e.g. where there is more than one place of the same name, or where a place name is not listed in the OS index. In such cases, Bartholomew’s Gazetteer can prove useful, or the 1971 Census Index of Great Britain, which gives grid references for places.
Part of Sheet 188 is in East Sussex, but it is a fairly small portion of the map: small enough to note down all the place names associated with churches, then look them up in Arnold-Forster for pre- or post-reformation date.
Knowing that a pre-reformation church is on Sheet 188, and knowing which map symbol represents it are two different things. We found the Pevsner Buildings of England series useful here. Occasionally they specify the site of the church in relation to its village, but more usefully they mention whether the various churches have towers or spires, which allows the church to be matched with the OS symbol. The Pevsner volumes used with street plans or 1:10000 sheets serve to sort out which church is which in clusters like those of Maidstone and Sevenoaks. Unfortunately, most churches are not named on 1:10000 maps. Where other methods fail, church identification can be made from 1:2500 plans.