The medieval Church of St. Mary, Ebony, and its Successors
THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH OF ST. MARY, EBONY,
AND ITS SUCCESSORS
SIR JOHN WINNIFRITH
If you approach Ebony from Tenterden, you will go down the long
hill which overlooks, and drops steadily into, the levels of the drained
marshes. From the high ground you may pick out the small church
which lies by the roadside further down. Beyond it, you will see rising
from the marshes an isolated hill looking rather like a gigantic,
stranded whale, except for a group of windswept trees on its crown.
Today it goes by the name of Chapel Bank. No road now climbs its
slopes; yet for centuries it was the spiritual and agricultural hub of the
parish and was ruled by priories from east Kent. The graveyard, still
there on its summit, is where the parish church once stood. It is
reached through the hamlet of Reading Street and over the narrow,
bridged dyke at the bottom of the Street where there used to be a
wide tideway forming a barrier. In 1353, the Prior of Christ Church,
Canterbury, made a grant of 'the use and charge of our ferry -
passagium nostrum - at the river of Redyngg.'1
The first mention of Ebony in the records is in a charter of
Aethelwulf of Wessex, then ruler of Kent. His charter, dated 832,
gave the land of Ebony to the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury.
The priory could well have built the earliest church, but the first for
which there is proof is that included in Domesday Monachorum.
Although not completed until about 1100, this record partially
discloses the pre-Norman organisation of minsters, each being a
missionary centre sponsoring a group of tributary churches which
were not yet fully fledged parish churches. The church at Ebony is
listed among those centred at Charing. It could have been built well
before that date by as much as two and a half centuries, but any
1 Letters of Christ Church Canterbury, II, 317 Transcript by Arthur Hussey in the
National Trust's collection of Dr. William Cock's papers.
157
SIR J. WINNIFRITH
church built as a result of Aethelwulf's charter, if in existence before
892, would most probably have been destroyed in the Danish
invasion in that year when the Danish fleet was based on Appledore.
We surmise, but do not know for certain, that the original church was
built on the same site as its immediate successors. Building materials,
such as stone and timber, could easily be brought by water to the foot
of the hill. The earliest stone church, whether Norman or pre-
Conquest, may indeed have some remains among foundations of
nave and chancel which have been exposed in excavation. Whatever
the date of the first church at Ebony, its patronage was, by 1210, at
the latest, transferred to Dover Priory which, in that year, appointed
a priest to serve Appledore and the chapel (cum capella) of Ebony.
The patronage of the two churches was to remain with Dover till its
dissolution in November 1535. The monks of Canterbury kept the
land given by Aethelwulf till they, in turn, were suppressed in 1540
and the manors passed to laymen.
For the later Middle Ages and beyond, records provide a wealth of
evidence for the 'changes and chances' which struck Ebony's church
fabric. Many facts are known about the structure of the church as it
was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: its contents, its despoliation
in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and its devastation
by fire about 1560. We also know that out of its ruins was built a much
smaller building which served the parish till 1858 when it was taken
down, stone by stone, and re-built with minor alterations at Reading
Street, a mile away. Here it still stands and continues the record of a
place of worship at Ebony for some one thousand years.
Information about these events, though recorded in documents,
has not up to now been set out in a narrative. Even the salient facts
about the old church on the island had been forgotten and transmitted
only in rare and out-of-print books. The tasks of assembling the
written records and of excavating the foundations of the old church
began only a few years ago. The excavation, under the leadership of
Mr. A. Miles, was started in 1979 by a group of K.A.S. members and
others, now allied to Tenterden Museum Association. I had already
studied some of the ancient records collected and copied by the late
Dr. William Cock of Appledore, and I have since made further
searches. That there were in his time surviving remains of a medieval
church had been clearly stated by Richard Kilburne of Hawkhurst
(1605-78) whose 'Topographie; or Survey of the County of Kent' was
published in 1659. Some of these remains were removed in the
Victorian demolition, and for this reason, or in consideration of the
long lapse of time, Kilburne's testimony was ignored or discounted by
those who investigated the site in the early 1900s. The recent
excavations have proved how right he was and how much still remains
158
THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH OF ST. MARY, EBONY
confirming his report. For it is becoming apparent that on top of the
island there was an aisled church of dimensions and construction
comparable with those of its sister church of Appledore and other
neighbouring churches.
The most dramatic discovery has been the massive foundations.
Although a tower has yet to be found, the main outlines of the old
church are plain. Measurements must, till the excavations have been
completed, be preliminary; but already enough has been done to
suggest, however provisionally, that the outside length of the building
was some 75 ft. It would be longer if the foundations of a tower at the
west end are found. At the east end the chancel and its side chapel
spanned some 49 ft. The breadth of the nave is wider, including north
and south aisles already found and measuring some % and, more
tentatively, 10 ft. in width, respectively.
The dig uncovered some well-worked stone, including the base of a
doorway and other shaped pieces of stone, besides numerous floortiles
which had been set in mortar on a bed of rammed chalk. Other
useful finds included coins dated from Edward I to Henry VI,
medieval and Tudor potsherds, many fragments of painted window
glass, beads, possibly from a rosary - and other artifacts. Specimens
have been deposited in Tenterden Museum.
The written records fill in the picture of what the church looked
like from the outside. Its height can only be deduced. It was high
enough to take the arched window of Perpendicular style still
preserved as the east window in the surviving chapel at Reading
Street. It was high enough to hold the rood screen on which were
mounted the figures of Christ crucified and of St. Mary the Virgin and
St. John. There was room to mount the structure of a rood loft. It
must have had a bell tower to hold the four 'grett' bells listed in the
inventory taken in Edward VI's reign.2 The records also confirm the
existence of a side chapel standing in all probability on the foundations
revealed in the dig at the south side of the east end. Archdeacon
Harpsfield's visitation3 in the penultimate year of Queen Mary's reign
ordered the parish not only to provide an altar of stone (a High Altar
is referred to in a will of 1469) but also to make up a side altar. Joan
Reynold in her will4 of 1528 asked that she should be buried 'in the
new chapel lately builded by the cost of my husband'. This new
2 Arch. Cant., viii (1872), 145.
3 Quotations from the archdeacon's visitations here and elsewhere in this article are
mostly from transcripts made by Dr. Cock, Arthur Hussey and A.H. Taylor of
Tenterden. It was possible to check only a few of these in the Cathedral Library. Some
may have been lost in the bombing.
4 Extracts from wills also taken from sources mentioned above.
159
SIR J. WINNIFRITH
chapel was not the Reading Street chapel (see pp. 162-3) which was in
existence in 1466, and it is probable that it was in this chapel that the
second altar stood. Wills of 1523 and 1533 make bequests to the
rodelight and the rood. The rood loft had been recently erected when
a benefaction was made to it in 1485. Finally, the records show that, if
effect was given to Richard Lawless' will of 1533, the churchyard was
railed with two tons of timber he had bequeathed.
This church standing on a site 100 ft. above sea level would have
been a landmark visible from miles away to the shipping coming up
the sea creek. Its interior was also impressive. As the parishioners
came into church they saw a blaze of lights and colour. There was a
shrine to the patron saint, St. Mary the Virgin. Wills of the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries refer to the shrine of St. Mary, to its
light and its image. They mention the brotherhood of St. Mary which
would have been charged with keeping the light burning. John Siller
left a legacy in 1502 for the reparation of the Tabernacle of St. Mary.
A tabernacle could be anything from a simple niche to an elaborate
enclosure with a canopy carved in wood or stone. Other saints had
their images and lights burning before them, provided by bequests of
the faithful. St. Katherine, who also had a Brotherhood, St. Stephen,
St. Peter, St. Thomas (who had a shrine) and St. James are
mentioned in wills. One parishioner recorded his wish to be buried
before the altar of St. Stephen, so that the side chapel mentioned
above may have been dedicated to St. Stephen. There was an altar of
St. Michael in the fifteenth century. Two legacies went to the
'Hogwell Light'. This is variously interpreted as a corruption of the
Anglo-Saxon halig i.e. the holy well, or hoch i.e. the high or deep
well. The fact that this light is included in a whole list of lights in
honour of saints is some support for the former view. There are
numerous springs on the island, but none has yet been identified with
the Hogwell.
Following the Dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII had the
land and the advowson of Ebony in his gift. Both went to Sir Walter
Hendley, attorney of the Court of Augmentations, who feathered his
nest by securing many monastic properties confiscated by his court.5
He settled his property at Ebony on his daughter Anne's future
husband, Richard Covert, a member of a baronet's family settled in
Slaugham in Sussex. So Ebony now had a lay rector, who took the
major tithes and was responsible for the upkeep of the chancel and
5 The record of Sir Walter Hendley's activities is in the printed Calendar of Letters
and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of Henry VIII - passim, but see especially the
volume for 1540-1541.
160
THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH OF ST. MARY, EBONY
churchyard, and was the owner of the two Ebony manors hitherto
held by the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury. Difficulties and, as
it turned out, disasters were in store for the church.
Like all churches, it suffered the pain and confusion caused by the
iconoclasm of Cranmer in Edward VI's reign, the attempts by Mary
to restore the old rite, and then the Protestant backlash, when
Elizabeth I succeeded her. An inventory taken in the last year of
Edward VI shows, however, that there had been comparatively little
spoliation of movable property. Vestments, silver vessels and the
four 'grett bells' as well as the Sanctus bell were therefore probably in
use throughout Mary's reign. Presumably, very few of the old
ornaments survived when Queen Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker
took over. In the long term, however, the worst misfortune of the
church was the progressive decay of the fabric already suffering from
neglect for many years before Elizabeth I came to the throne.
As early as 1511, long before the Reformation, Archbishop
Warham found that 'the chancel was not sufficiently repaired, neither
above nor below nor in the glass windows'. His decision was to
require the vicar of Appledore and Ebony to repair the chancel and
its windows under pain of sequestration. The repair of the chancel
was the duty of the recipient of the major tithes, at this time Dover
Priory or the priory's farmer of the Ebony tithes. Possibly William
Marshall, then vicar of Appledore and Ebony, had agreed to farm the
tithes for Dover Priory. He was a pluralist and a very rich man. In
such custody country churches were all too apt to deteriorate.
In 1557, Archdeacon Harpsfield, trying to restore the stone altars
and to make good the deficiencies in vestments, etc., found that
Henry VIII's gift of Ebony to Sir Walter Hendley was resulting in
serious damage. Sir Walter had died in 1550, leaving apparently a life
interest in the Ebony manors to his widow, who promptly married
one Thomas Roberts of Ticehurst, Sussex. The archdeacon made a
note 'to speak to Mr. Roberts who had pulled away the lead of the
chancel and covered it with shingles, to repair the same and the
church and the house for the priest.' Although part of the church had
been shingled by 1485, when Thomas Herrys left 20s. for shingling,
shingles were a far greater fire risk and not so effective as lead. Mr.
Roberts, as the sequel shows, played out time, and did nothing. In
1560, the parish reported 'the north door of the chancel is all to
broke, the fault of Mr. Roberts who married my lady Hendley'.
Six years later, worse still had happened. The ruinous state of the
fabric by then moved a parishioner to leave £20 towards rebuilding
the church 'if it should be built again in the form and manner of a
church.' A further report noted that the vicarage house was in decay
and used as a cattle shed. In 1574, the vicarage was in ruins and the
161
SIR J. WINNIFRITH
parish was ordered to shingle the church - to no avail because in 1590
the church 'was fentred with extreme winds'. Thereafter there is no
recorded complaint.
What happened to the medieval building, and when, can only be a
matter of conjecture. Yet one trustworthy account comes from
Kilburne (op. cit.) who wrote that the church of St. Mary, Ebony,
'was anciently far larger than it now is, the foundation whereof is yet
discernible. But, about 100 years since, it was burned by Lightening,
and instead thereof, a little church now standing was built upon part
of the former foundations'. A fire spreading to the shingled roof
would have caused extensive damage, especially if the tie-beams fell
in dragging down walls and pillars. In neighbouring Kenardington the
church was, according to Hasted, burnt by lightning in 1559 but was
restored in part by Roger Home, the Lord of the Manor. Although
there was a presentment to the archdeacon by the churchwarden in
1560, there was no mention of the fire. In 1565, there was a happy
report that 'our church is in hand to be builded again.' Both in
Kenardington and Ebony the absence of any reference, at the time,
to the lightning strikes is puzzling. The same storm could well have
been responsible for the lightning at both churches. Evelyn Woodruff
in his Extracts from original documents illustrating the progress of the
Reformation in Kent gives a possible explanation of the lack of
contemporary references. He says that there are considerable gaps in
the Canterbury records for the opening year of Queen Elizabeth's
reign, caused in part by fire. So, records about Ebony and Kenardington
may have been destroyed. It is also possible that as a result of the
administrative confusion in the first years of the transition from a
Catholic to a Protestant regime, no visitation took place.
During the next thirty years while the church, and particularly the
chancel, remained in a decayed state, the congregation and the priest
must have endured considerable discomfort, huddling in what shelter
remained in the old house of prayer. Somehow they hung on. The
transcripts of the parish register show that the sacraments of christening,
marriage and burial continued throughout this period.
THE READING STREET CHAPEL
Before leaving the medieval church on the island, mention should be
made of an appendage to it - the medieval Reading Street chapel. It
is clear from the wills quoted below that not only was' there the
church on the island but, from at least the early fifteenth century,
there was also a chapel at Reading Street. What size it was and where
it stood has not been established nor has any trace of it been found.
162
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