Acrise comes from the Old English ‘āc’ meaning an ‘oak-tree’ with ‘hrīs’ as ‘shrubs,
brushwood’; therefore, ‘Oak brushwood’. The Domesday Book records Acrise as Acers.
Acrise parish church is a Grade: I listed building, dedicated to Saint Martin. The
Saxons built the first church, on this site, as a Chapel-of-Ease to Lyminge. The
Normans rebuilt it in the 11th century, lengthening the chancel in the following
century, and other extensions and additions in the next 100 years. There is a record
of two bells in 1552, which Thomas Palmer I replaced with a single bell in 1664.
In 1799 Edward Hasted described the Acrise church as being ‘small, consisting of
only one isle and one chancel, having a tower at the west end, with a low turret
on it, flat at top, in which there is one bell. The church is kept very neat’. The
Victorians restored the chancel in the 19th century, adding the turret and spire
in 1824…. more
