The earliest record of St Mary's Church, Goudhurst, is dated 1119 in the reign of Henry 1. There was probably a church on the hill above the village long before then, perhaps even in Saxon times. From the present tower it is said that you can see (on a clear day, and presumably with a telescope!) an many as fifty-one other churches, from Lympne by the marshes to Ide Hill on the North Downs. Formerly this prospect would have been ever more remarkable, for when the tower was built in the early part of the 14th century it was one storey higher and crowned with a spire. The spire stood until 1637 when, during a summer storm it was struck by lightning and burned to destruction. To the North-West, Canary Wharf Tower in London can now be seen, a distance of forty miles.