St Peter. Molash. Canterbury. Kent. CT4 8HD.

** kentchurches.info **
St Peter's is in a windswept location, in open farmland, with ancient yew trees and a patina of great antiquity. Abutting the north side of the tower, and entered from the church, is a rare medieval priest's house. The nave has a distinctly unusual atmosphere. It is lofty and plain, with much light flooding in from the large south windows. While there is no chancel arch there is a horizontal beam which carries the Royal Arms of George III. The three-crownpost roof is beautifully set off by whitewashed walls which are almost devoid of monuments. After the nave the chancel is something of an anti-climax, although there are traces of medieval wall paintings on the south wall.
** molash.com **
The church as it stands dates from the early C.13 but there is every reason to suppose there was an earlier church on the site, for the conversion of Kent had been undertaken with great success some six hundred years before the raising of the present structure. True, in an ancient building like St. Peter's, one might expect to find architectural features preserved from a building more ancient still, but in this case, as it happens, there are none discernible above ground. Even so, the yew trees 'of magnificent foliage and girth' that encircle the church were computed in 1880 to be already one thousand years old (A Kentish Garland, 1881, p. 109): four hundred years older, that is to say, than the present building. There are six of them now and used to be a seventh (on the S. side). It is not fanciful to think that, as young trees, they encircled a Saxon church the forerunner of this one.
Then again, the Norman font, which tradition relates to have been found years ago (in fact since 1800) being used as a cattle-trough at Church Farm, is considerably older than the building in which it now stands.