Churches of the British Isles

The present church was consecrated in 1878. It is a simple and relatively plain building with seating for just a hundred or so. None of the stained glass from the old church survived, so the oldest windows are the two on the north side, which were installed in 1903. The east windows were commissioned in 1924 to depict St Augustine (founder of the first chantry at Reculver) and St Nicholas (patron saint of seafarers) recalling the history of Reculver Towers as a navigation mark.

St Mary's (Old) Church Reculver lies at the very eastern end of Reculver Lane, hugging the coast to the immediate east of Herne Bay and Beltinge (see 'related links'). Two thousand years ago the site was about a kilometre and-a-half away from the sea, but coastal erosion has seen the waters of the Thames Estuary creep to within a few metres of the church's northern flank. The newly-arrived Romans in AD 43 erected one of their first forts here, named Regulbium.

At the start of the third century a much larger stone fort was built here, on the southern flank of the later church and this is still marked out by the visitor information panels as a place of interest. When Jutes and Saxons arrived in East Kent from about AD 450 they made use of the Roman fort. It represented a seat of power and, with the name now mangled as Raculf as it crossed from Latin to Old English, the site became a royal residence of the kings of Kent.

King Ecgberht in 669 permitted the founding of a monastery alongside his royal residence, with the initial work being undertaken by a priest named Bassa. The monastery's abbot, Bertwald, became archbishop of Canterbury in 693. The church structure here grew in stages, covering part of the Roman ruins outside of the royal residence and using some of its stone. Viking attacks in the ninth century may have caused the monastery to be abandoned though.

The church survived the attacks but was replaced in the 1100s, with two highly distinctive towers and some of the older Saxon remains. With the population gradually drifting southwards as the coast did the same, the church became isolated. In 1810 it was replaced by a new church (see above) and was blown up in 1809. The bell went to St Leonard Baddlesmere in 1830. The towers were kept as a navigational aid, and sea defences have been added to protect them.

All photos on this page by P L Kessler. The tour now progresses into Thanet.