Modern Britain

St Mary Queningate (or Queeningate) lay adjacent to the Queningate itself (now represented by the square tower seen here), just inside the city wall, and opposite the entrance to Lady Wootons Green. The church, or chapel, is believed to have been Saxon, but it was a minor one which was poorly recorded. In 1381, the rector exchanged it for St Michael's Church, proving its existence at that date, but no later. It was probably closed in 1486, but some foundations survive.

The Church of St Paul without the Walls shares the parish with St Martin's (below). It is located on Church Street, just outside the city walls, and may stand on the site of a Roman cemetery chapel, as it is situated just outside the Burgate, close to a site from which Roman burials have been excavated. A Saxon church certainly existed here, but the current building, with its round, Early English pillars, was built in the thirteenth century, and a burial ground was established in 1591.

In the fourteenth century the church was extended so that it joined up with the free-standing tower. In 1490 a parishioner named Richard Cram donated towards a new pair of organs. A Victorian print of the church shows the outer walls to have been rendered in white, but this was removed to redisplay the original knapped flint walls, probably in 1876 when the church was enlarged and partially rebuilt, with a new aisle and vestry being added.

St Martin's Church is the very first Anglo-Saxon parish church. Around AD 580, King Ethelbert of Kent gave his Christian wife a place of worship in an old Roman building on this site. When in 597 Pope Gregory sent Augustine to convert the pagan English, he and his party were also allowed to worship here, extending it before constructing the first Canterbury Cathedral. The Roman red bricks that were used to build the walls of the present church can still be seen today.

It is debatable how much of the original, Roman-brick church survives. Saxon building work replaced some of it when the church was extended in the seventh century. Many of the Saxon, or perhaps even original Roman, windows have been blocked off, possibly by Norman work. In 1845 the vestry was built, so the west end of the north wall had to be pulled down, but the church remains in use, around 1429 years after it was first given to Queen Bertha for worship.