| Summary : An Anglo-Saxon church, rebuilt circa 965, incorporating the remains of the abbey church, founded circa 633. Built on the site of a Roman building, possibly a bath house or a villa. The church has a plan of nave, north aisle, west tower and chancel, altered in the 11th, 12th, 14th and 16th centuries. Lyminge was one of the early minsters founded in Kent before 700 AD. Domesday Monachorum records 10 churches dependent upon the minster. Ethelburga returned to Kent after the death of her husband, King Edwin of Northumbria, founding the nunnery and monastery, and becoming its first abbess. It was ruled by Abbot Cuthbert before he became Bishop of Hereford in 736. Although ravaged by the Danes, it survived until circa 964. |
More information : [TR 16104085] St Mary's Nunnery and Monastery [NR] (Remains of, AD 633) [NAT] Erected on Site of [NAT] Villa Maxima [R] (1)
[TR 16084086] Roman bronze ampulla found near here A.D. 1895 [NAT]
[TR 16104084] Roman coin found here A.D. 1929 [NAT] (2)
The church of St. Mary and St. Ethelburga dates to circa AD 965, the work of St. Dunstan, and still incorporates part of his church and also, in the south wall, part of an earlier small church of Kentish type which lay immediately to the south, and is believed to have been the church of the nunnery and monastery founded here in AD 633 by St. Ethelburga. The meadow to the south called Court Lodge Green, later incorporated in the churchyard, was covered with mounds of masonry in the 19th century (5). Excavations by Canon Jenkins (6,7) revealed foundations of what he took to be an unusually large and ambitious Saxon church incorporating the remains of a Roman "basilical" church, though it is now accepted that only the remains adjoining the present church are Saxon, and that the rest form part of a Roman building, perhaps a bath-house (8-9). See plan (10). They were said in the Gent's Magazine to represent "a Roman villa of considerable extent." The NE corner of the nave and a part of the apsidal chancel walling of Ethelburga's church have been left visible beside the south porch of the present church. See illustration (10). Much Roman material is incorporated in the fabric of the present church and also in the foundations of the earlier church, in the NW corner of which Jenkins found a Roman ampulla 8ft below the surface (6). (3-10)
While considerable amounts of Roman tile have been employed in the construction of the churches, no traces of a Roman building were found. On exhibition in the present church is an olla of Upchurch ware, said to have probably been found in the churchyard by Canon Jenkins, also a radiate of Gallienus found in 1929 near the remains of the Saxon apse, and an ampulla bearing a card which states it was found by Canon Jenkins circa 1895. This is clearly in error, and should probably read circa 1874. Of the early Saxon church, the line of the apse is marked out by flagstones, and the junction of the apse with the north wall of the nave has been built up above ground level with Roman tile fragments. The course of the N wall running beneath the S porch of the existing church is marked by rubble masonry which appears to be a reconstruction. West of the present church, in a Garden of Remembrance, some foundations of roughly squared ragstone appear to be in line with the Saxon remains further east. (11)
Church of St. Mary and St. Ethelburga and the remains of the older Church to the south of this, Grade A. The present building consists of a chancel, a nave with a north aisle, a south porch and a west tower. (For full description see list). (12)
Additional Bibliography. (13-23)
Church of St Mary and St Ethelburga and remains of the Older Church to the south. Abbey church, now parish church. Site of a mixed sex abbey founded by St Ethelburga (wife of King Edwin of Northumbria) in cAD 633. The present church dates from c965 with late 12th, 14th and early 16th century alterations and additions. The south wall of the nave, towards the west end, is apparently raised on vestiges of the north wall of (a "porticus" of?) the c633 church. Grade 1. (24)
KE 54 Listed as the possible site of a Roman villa. (25)
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