Reculver Towers, Reculver, Kent - a photo on Flickriver

Reculver was once one of the two forts guarding the entrances to the Wantsum Channel, the body of water that separated Thanet from the rest of Kent. The other fort was at Richborough, and the layout of both in Roman times was similar.

The Channel silted up, the Romans left, and the fort was partly turned into a church, a fine Saxon building, which largely survived until the beginning of the 19th century, at which point the incumbent persuaded the congregation to pull it down and build a new church nearer the then village centre.

At that time it was perhaps the best preserved early Saxon church in England, just its footprint now remains. Tat and the towers of the fort, once topped by spires.

I had wanted to revisit for some time, so on Saturday before Christmas I got the chance, and I tried to beat a family up the slope to the ruins to get shots before they arrived.

The footprint of the Saxon church has been marked in the grass, the curves east wall of the apse clearly shown.

A few gravemarkers still stand, now divorced from a church.

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The remains of a Saxon and thirteenth century church built on the spot where King Ethelbert of Kent found Christianity soon after the arrival of St Augustine in AD597. Of a particular ground plan, it was, until its demolition in 1810, the best surviving remains of an early Saxon church in England. However the local incumbent felt it was too far away from the centre of population and built a new church further inland, reusing some stones and memorials.

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Reculver+1

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RECULVER.
THE next parish to Chistlet north eastward, is Reculver, called by the Romans, Regulbium, and by the Saxons, at first, Raculf, and afterwards Raculf-cester, on account of its castle, and Raculf-minister, on account of the monastery built at it. By the survey of Domesday it appears once to have been a hundred of itself, but it has been long since accounted part of the hundred of Blengate, containing within it the boroughs of Reculver, Brooksgate, Eastermouth, Westermouth, Chelmington, and Shottenton. The borough of Chelmington is in Great Chart, and the borough of Shottenton in Selling. The borsholders of these boroughs have not appeared at the court for many years, but are still called over at it for form sake. The manor extends likewise into the parish of Barham.

RECULVER was a place of considerable note in the time of the Romans, who had here a watch tower and a fort, said to be built by the emperor Severus, anno 205, in which, as the Notitia tells us, lay in garrison the first cohort of the Vetasians, under the command of the count of the Saxon shore, for so in those times were the sea coasts hereabouts stiled. As these buildings were usually set on the highest ground nearest the place which was thought most convenient for them, it may be concluded that this stood on the level space upon the high cliff, where the church is at present, commanding an extensive view on all sides, and open to the German ocean. At the foot of it, towards the north, was the sea, and on the other side the water of Genlade, or the Wantsune, which then being of considerable breadth, flowed round the Isle of Thanet, sepsrating it from the main land of Kent, and emptying itself here, on the eastern boundary of this parish, into the sea at Northmouth, it formed one of the ports of Rutupiœ; at which time, and for a long time afterwards, the usual passage for the shipping was on the above water, between the Isle of Thanet and the main land of Kent, and not on the sea side of it, as at present; so that the land here being thus nearly encompassed on three sides by water, formed a kind of nook or promontory. There are much of the walls of this fort remaining, which contain within them a level space of about eight acres. The form is a square, a little rounded at the corners. The walls on three sides are very visible, but the fourth, towards the north, has been very lately, nearly all of it, destroyed by the falling of the cliff down on the sea shore, where vast fragments of it lie. (fn. 1) The remaining walls inclose a hill of loose sand, which is higher in every part than the ground without. The foundation of them, where they are exposed to view, in many parts corresponds exactly with those at Richborough. The facing of the wall, both within and without, is nearly destroyed, they no where remain more than ten feet high. There are no fragments of them remaining, excepting from that part which falls down into the sea, on the north side, where the detached materials having been separated by the waves and the weather, are spread to a great distance over the surface of the shore. Upon measuring the large fragment which fell lately, it was found to be between eight and nine feet in thickness, so that with its two facings, it must have been originally about eleven feet through, as at Richborough; and by the form, and the method of building here, it cannot be doubted but that this fort and Richborough had the same builders. The antient town was probably built without this wall, declining towards the sea, on that part of the land long since swallowed up by the waves, and from the present shore as far as a place called the Black Rock, seen at lowwater mark, where tradition says, a parish church once stood, there have been found quantities of tiles, bricks, fragments of walls, tesselated pavements, and other marks of a ruinated town, and the household furniture, dress, and equipment of the horses belonging to the inhabitants of it, are continually found among the sands; for after the fall of the cliffs, the earthen parts of them being washed away, these metalline substances remain behind. The soil of the cliff being a loose sand, the sea has yearly gained on it; the force of the waves in winter separating large pieces of it from the rest, which tumbling on the shore below, discover from time to time a number of cisterns, cellars, &c quantities of coins, and other remains of antiquity. Among the Roman coins found here, there have been several which are certain marks of high antiquity, as the consular denarii, and coins of almost all the Roman emperors from Julius Cæsar to Honorius, some brass ones of Tiberius and Nero, as fresh as if just new from the mint; all which are supposed by some to be proofs, that the Romans had very early a settlement here, and continued to use it as long as they dwelt in Britain, But those found in the greatest numbers, are those of a smaller size, and of the lower empire. (fn. 2) Here have been likewise found those British coins of the metal called electrum, one fourth gold and the rest brass; and small silver pieces, of the size of an English two-pence, stamped only with strange characters, and some with rude heads and christian crosses, of a larger size; and Saxon coins, with the names of EDPERD, EADLARD EDELRED, and LUDRED. (fn. 3) Even when Leland wrote, in Henry VIII.'s time, the village was full a quarter of a mile from the sea, whereas now, what is left of it, is so close to it, as to be washed by the waves, and the church itself is only a few rods from it. Leland's words are, "Reculver ii myles and more be water and a mile dim. by land beyownd Heron ys fro Cantorbury v good myles and stondeth withyn a quarter of a myle or lyttle more of the se syde. The towne at this tyme is but village lyke. Sumtyme wher as the paroche chyrch is now was a sayre abbay and Brightwald archbishop of Cantorbury was of that house. The old building of the chirch of the abbay remayneth having ii goodly spiring steeples.

——— "The whole precinct of the monastery appereth by the old walle and the vicarage was made of ruines of the monastery. Ther is a neglect chapel owt of the chyrch-yard wher sum say was a paroch chirch or the abbay was suppressed and given to the bishop of Cantorbury. There hath bene much Romain money fownd abowt Reculver." And again below

" Reculver is now scarse half a mile from the shore But it is to be supposid that yn tymes paste the se cam hard to Goreende a 2 myle from Northmouth and at Goreende is a litle staire caullied Broode staires to go downe the clive, and about this shore is good taking of mullettes. The great Raguseis ly for defence of wind at Gore ende, and thens againe is another sinus on to the foreland." At present it is only a small mean village, of five or six houses, situated a small distance from the church, and inhabited mostly by fishermen and smugglers, and would be unworthy of notice, but for the reputation it derives from former times. The church, which once belonged to the monastery here, already mentioned before, and built on the scite both of the palace of king Ethelred and the more antient Roman fort, stands conspicuous for a great distance on all sides, the two spires of it, in form of pyramids, usually called the Reculvers, and by seamen the Two Sisters, being a constant sea-mark for them, to avoid the sands and shoals on this coast, (fn. 4) but the sea has from time to time so continually washed the hill away on which it stands, that it was much feared in a few years it would have been wholly destroyed, till very lately such quantities of beach have been thrown up by the waves, as to form an unexpected, though very sure, natural bulwark to prevent its ruin. At a small distance from the church, close to the cliff, is an antient gothic building, formerly the chapel of St. James, and belonging to the hermit of Reculver. It is now converted into a cottage, the walls of which are mostly composed of Roman bricks, and in the wall is an arch entirely so. At some distance is a small house, which has a religious gothic appearance, and is supposed to have been formerly the dwelling of the hermit, and king Richard II. in his 3d year, granted a commission to Thomas Hamond, hermyte of the chapel of St. James, &c. being at our lady of Reculver, ordeyned for the sepulture of such persons as by casualtie of stormy or other misadventures were perished to receive the alms of charitable people for the building of the roof of the chapel fallen down. Near the corner of the church stands the vicarage-house. The rest of the parish is in general low marshy land, excepting towards the west, where it is a continuance of high land, where May-Street and the hamlet of Hilsborough stand; and a little from it, near the sea, BISHOPSTONE, once accounted a manor, which for many years was the seat and property of the family of Cobbe, who resided here till the latter end of the last century. (fn. 5) After which it was alienated to Hulke, from which name it came by marriage to Mr. Thomas Elwyn, alderman of Canterbury, who died possessed of it in 1788, and left two sons, who have since sold it to Mr. Stephen Sayer, and he is now entitled to it. The east part of this parish is bounded by marshes within the parish of Chistlet, once overslowed by the Wantsume, now only a narrow stream, of about one rod wide, kept open to few the adjoining lands, with a sluice towards the sea, where the harbour of Northmouth, or Genlade, once was. A fair is held here on the 1st of September yearly.

About half a mile from this village, towards Herne, Dr. Gray, of Canterbury, found in the cliff a strata of shells, in a greenish sand. They seemed firm, and some of them entire, but crumbled to powder on being handled. But what was most remarkable, in the lower part of the strata, where the shells were more thickly dispersed, there lay scattered up and down, parts of trunks, roots, and branches of trees, the wood of which was as black as ebony, and so rotten as to be easily broken with the singers. One of them was standing upright, but broken off about a foot from the ground. There were about twelve feet from the supersices or top of the cliff. (fn. 6)

The fig tree, sicus carica, appears among the bushes along the south wall of the castle, and the dwarf elder, sambucus ebulus, abounds there.

¶ETHELBERT, king of Kent, having embraced the christian faith, and given St. Augustine his palace at Canterbury, is said, about the year 597, to have retired with his court hither, and to have built for himself a palace on the scite of the old Roman ruins at this place. Bede says, the villæ regiæ; of the Saxons were usually placed upon or near where the antient Roman stations had been before. The Notitia Provinciarum (which was not written before the time of Theodosius the younger) is the only book which mentions this place; before which this silence, concerning the name of Reculver, makes it probable, this fort was known by the general name of Rutupiæ. Reculver continued a royal residence till king Egbert, as an atonement for the murder of his two nephews, gave it, in the year 669, to a priest named Bassa, to build a monastery on it, which he accordingly did, for monks of the Benedictine order, dedicating it to St. Mary, and probably became the first abbot of it himself. From which time this place came to be called Raculf-minster. After which this abbey was given, with the whole parish and all of right belonging to it, in 949, by king Edred, in the presence of queen Edgive his mother, and archbishop Odo, to the monastery of Christ-church, in Canterbury. (fn. 7) Notwithstanding which it appears to have continued as a religious society, only with the alteration of the superior's title from that of abbot to dean, till a few years before the Norman conquest. After which there is nothing found further relating to it, but it is supposed to have ceased as a monastery, and to have come into the hands of William the Conqueror, who restored it, with its revenues, to archbishop Lanfranc, as having been given to his church of Canterbury, and soon afterwards, on the separation of the estates of it between the archbishop and the priory of Christchurch there, THIS MANOR OF RECULVER with its demesnes, of which the antient scite of the abbey was esteemed part, and the church appurtenant, was allotted to the former. Accordingly, in the record of Domesday, it is thus described, under the general title of the archbishop's lands:

In Roculf hundred, the archbishop himself holds Roculf. It was taxed at eight sulings. The arable land is thirty carucates. In demesne there are three carucates, and four times twenty and ten villeins, with twenty-five borderers having twenty-seven carucates. There is a church, and one mill of twenty-five pence, and thirty-three acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of twenty bogs, and five salt-pits of sixty-four pence, and one fishery. In its whole value, in the time of king Edward the Confessor, this manor was worth fourteen pounds, when he received it the like, and now thirty-five pounds; of this the archbishop has seven pounds and seven shillings.

Soon after which, archbishop Lanfranc, on his founding of the hospitals of Harbledowne and St. John, endowed them with seven score pounds, yearly out of his manors of Reculver and Bocton. After which king Edward II. granted to archbishop Walter a market weekly on a Thursday here, and a fair yearly on the feast of St. Giles, abbot, being Sept, I, but the former, if ever held, has been long since obsolete. (fn. 8) Since which it has continued part of the possessions of the see of Canterbury to this time, the manor his grace the archbishop retains in his own hands, but the demesnes of it, called the Lord's lands, are demised by him on benesicial leases to several tenants, the principal of whom is Sir Henry Oxenden, bart.

A court leet and court baron is held for this manor. The constable of the upper half hundred of Blengate is chosen at this court, which is usually held at Herne. The archbishop has a right to the royalty of the fishery and oysters, with the beach and oozy grounds of the sea, to lay and breed the oysters on, between the full sea water mark, and the dead low water mark, from Herne bay rock to the Beltinge ware rand, lying within this manor.

RFCULVER is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Westbere.

The church, which is exempt from the archdeacon, is dedicated to St. Mary. It consists of three isles and a chancel, having two similar spires at the west end, in one of which hang four bells. The church seems to be in some measure the same building which was used as the abbey church, though from the frequent alterations and repairs it has undergone, the original appearance of it has been so greatly changed, that it has induced many to suppose the whole of it a much more modern structure. It has at this time a look of decay, the materials having greatly mouldered away, from its being so much exposed to the weather, and the corrosive quality of the sea air. At a distance it is a striking object, especially from the two spires at the west end. The stile of building is various, and of different ages; the middle isle and chancel being the most antient, the side isle of much later date. The west door is a pointed arch, of Caen Stone, with Saxon Ornaments, much decayed. The arch of the north door is circular. The quoins are of squared stones, the rest of the walls irregular stones mixed with Roman bricks. The roof was once, or at least intended to be, much higher and more pointed, as appears by the rise of the pediment at the west end between the two spires. There is a handsome flight of steps to the chancel from the isle, and another at the approach to the altar. The chancel is separated from the church by three small circular arches, supported by two losty round pillars, with plain capitals of a singular form. At the extremity of the east end is a handsome triplet of lancet windows, and four single ones of the same form on the north and south sides. At the west end of the body, over the door, is a triforium. The floor was laid in terras, made of coarse stone and mortar, so smooth as to seem polished, being thinly incrusted with a red composition, a small part of which only remains, facing the north door, and in the chancel the pavement is mixed with small figured tiles, like those in many other churches.

Leland says, in his Itinerary, vol. vii.p. 136, " The old building of the chirch of the abbay remayneth, having ii goodly spiring steples Yn the enteryng of the quyer ys one of the sayrest and the most auncyent crosse that ever I saw a ix footes, as I ges yn highte. It standyth lyke a fayr columne," (which he describes at large, with the figures on it, and lays) "The hiest part of the piller has the figure of a cross. In the chirch ys a very auncient boke of the Evangelyes in majusculis literis RO and yn the bordes therof ys a cristal stone thus inscribed CLAVDIA ATEPICCUS. Yn the north side of the chirch is the figure of a bishop paynted under an arch. In digging abowt the chyrch yarde they find old bokels of girdals and rings."

In this church the body of king Ethelbert is said to have been buried, and Weever says, in his time, that is, in king James I.'s reign, "there was remaining at the upper end of the south isle,a monument of an antique form, mounted with two spires, under which, according to tradition, this monarch lay." But no remains of the cross or monument are left, but a tablet had been put up to perpetuate the memory of it. In the chancel, within the altar-rails, is a handsome monument for Sir Cavalliero Maycote, and dame Marie his wife; above are their arms, Quarterly, ermine, on a canton, argent, a stag seiant, gules; and party per pale, sable and ermine, a chevron engrailed, gules. On the north side of the altar is carved in stone, Gules, semee of cross-croslets, a lion rampant, or . On a flat stone in the chancel, the effigies in brass of a man and his wife, and under them eight sons and seven daughters. He is represented in armour, with his feet on a greyhound. Over him a coat, three boars heads couped. She is in an immense high head dress, and over her three rams heads couped, and underneath an inscription for John Sandewey, esq. and Joane his wife. Near this grave-stone is an antient one, having a cross flory standing on a grice. Near the entrance is a memorial for Robert Godden, gent. late vicar of Reculver, obt. 1672. Against the south wall, on a tablet of black marble, is the figure, about a foot high, of a man habited in his herald's surcoat, cloak, trunkbreehes, boots and spurs, with short hair and beard; and over him, Or, a cross engrailed, party per pale, gules and sable, on a chief of the second, a lion passantguardant of the first; and underneath an inscription, for Ralph Brooke, esq. late Yorke herald, who died in 1625. In the middle isle are several stones with memorials for the families of Cobb and Hills, both of this parish; arms on the former, A chevron, between three cocks. And in a window of the south isle, there is remaining the arms of England, Gules, three lions passant guardant, or.

¶The church of Reculver was always appendant to the manor, parcel of the antient possessions of the see of Canterbury, to which it was, with the chapels of Herne, Hothe, and Reculver annexed, early appropriated; for archbishop Kilwardbye disliking the method of payment made by his predecessor Lanfranc to the hospitals of Harbledowne and Northgate, from this manor towards their support, withdrew it, and in lieu, appropriated to their use this parsonage, with the chapels annexed, saving a competent portion to the vicar, who should have the cure of the church. Which was confirmed by king Edward I. in his 4th year. (fn. 10) This alteration archbishop Peckham revoked, and restored the revenue of the parsonage to its former state. Archbishop Stratford, at the time he obtained licence anno 22 Edward III. to appropriate this parsonage, held in capite, towards the support of his table, added to the income of the hospitals twenty pounds likewise from it; but on the archbishop's death soon afterwards, no use was made of this licence, so far as related to the hospitals, till archbishop Islip, anno 1355, confirmed the same, and further decreed, that the whole of the sums payable yearly from the manor, viz. 140l. and 20l. likewise from this parsonage, should be paid yearly out of the rents and profits of the latter, so long as it should continue appropriated, which it is at this time. This parsonage extends likewise over the parishes of Herne and Hothe, formerly accounted as chapels to the church of Reculver, Richard Milles, esq. of Nackington, being the present lessee of it, under the archbishop, at the yearly rent of forty pounds. From the above time these two hospitals have continued to enjoy this allowance; but the parsonage becoming inadequate in its value to so large a payment, (fn. 11) it has been for some time past paid yearly as the archbishop's alms, out of the temporalities of the see of Canterbury.

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol9/pp109-125

Taken on: December 11, 2021

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