Womenswold comes from the Old English ‘ingas’ meaning the ‘people of, people called
after’ and ‘wald’ as a ‘forest, high forest-land’ combined with a, possible, personal
name of ‘Wimel’; therefore, ‘forest of the people of Wimel’.
Womenswold parish church is a Grade: I listed building, dedicated to Saint Margaret
of Antioch. The Normans built the church in the 12th century as a Chapel-of-Ease
to Wingham, then later Nonington, before becoming a parish in its own right. They
added the tower in the 13th century. In 1800, Edward Hasted described St Margaret’s
church as consisting of ‘one isle and a high chancel, with a small cross sept on
the north side, having a tower steeple at the west end, in which there is one bell.
The church appears long and low, without any partition on the roof, or on the pavement
in the inside, between the isle and chancel; the latter part seems much the more
antient’. The Victorians restored it in 1870…. more
