But to Mr. Eversley, and therefore, of course, to Gerald in his early days, the heart of Kestercham parish--the building to which it owed its unity and sanctity--was the church. Mr. Eversley, who had some slight knowledge of architecture, would delight in pointing out to his young son the traces of many hands and different ages in the structure of the church--the outline of the old Norman archway at the west end, the six (would be) decorated windows of the nave, the groined roofing in the chancel and the massive tower built in the reign of Henry VII. by Edward Rickling, then the head of the Rickling family who for many generations owned the manor of Kestercham and lived at the Grange--it was then called the Hall--before it passed into the hands of the Seafords. The Ricklings have left many marks of their importance upon the church, perhaps the most striking being a large monument on the north wall representing the same Edward Rickling laid out after his death, and his wife and three sons and two daughters weeping beside him. Nearly opposite to the memorial of the Rickling family is a monument in brass supposed (though nobody knows) to have borne the name of a certain Balthazar Gardereau, a French Huguenot and silk-merchant of Lyons who settled at Kestercham, when he had been driven out of his own country by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, acquired the great tithes of the living, and presented to the church the service of Communion plate which still exhibits the letters B. G. in monograph. But this is history, or it is legend, the best of which Kestercham is capable. The Kestercham folk were not, it may be supposed, loyal to the Crown in the seventeenth century, or, as is more probable, they displayed no interest in politics or war, and so escaped the anger of Cromwell’s army which is said to have been once encamped somewhere in the neighbourhood; for there is a royal coat of arms of Charles I., with the date 1640, hanging in the church, and it can hardly be thought that the Roundheads, if they had caught sight of it, would have left it there. Mr. Eversley, as a loyalist and a believer in the divine right of kings, was very proud of it. The south porch of the church is or was a little remarkable; for under its gable was the figure of a flying angel bearing a scroll with the legend, ‘Gather my saints together unto me,’ the church being dedicated to All Saints. When Mr. Eversley came to Kestercham a tall cross rose behind the figure of the angel and surmounted the gable. Mr. Eversley left the angel, not without a qualm of conscience, but he caused the cross to be taken down at the same time as he removed all traces of a holy-water basin which some workmen in repairing the porch had brought to light.