Capel and Tudeley, Kent: The unassuming village churches with concealed masterpieces within

Annunciata Elwes continues her look at Secret Britain's best spots with the surprising artworks at the churches of Capel and Tudeley in Kent.

The 12th century church at Capel in Kent.
The 12th century church at Capel in Kent.
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

In 1868, an extraordinary discovery was made at the Church of St Thomas Becket — an entire wall of didactic 13th-century paintings lurking beneath thick plaster.

There are clear scenes, such as Jesus entering Jerusalem, His arrest, the Last Supper, the Risen Christ with Mary Magdalene and Cain slaying Abel.

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The latter might have reminded pilgrims en route to Canterbury of the terrible fate of the church’s named saint.

Sadly, those pilgrims would have been a few hundred years too early to see Chagall’s 12 dazzling stained-glass windows at All Saints, Tudeley, less than two miles west.

All Saints Church with the Chagall stained glass windows in Tudeley; Kent.

Installed between 1967 and 1985 (the year the Russian-French artist died), they are unique; the only other Chagall-designed glass in Britain is a single window in Chichester Cathedral.

Marc Chagall'a stained glass window, All Saints' Tudeley Church, Kent.

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Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.