The Church of S. Mary and S. Eadburg, Lyminge

THE CHURCH OF S. MARY AND S. EADBURG, LYMINGE By EDWARD GILBERT LYMINGE, near Fokkestone, was royal property belonging to King Ethelbert of Kent and was given by him to his daughter S. Ethelburga, (Eadburg) when she retired to Kent after the death of her husband, King Edwin of Northumbria in A.D. 633. Here she founded a double monastery. Her church, dedicated to S. Mary is last heard of about A.D. 840. Then in A.D. 960 a certain Athelstan gave money to 'the church of Lyminge' which may well have been for rebuilding. At about the same time the site came into the hands of the Archbishops of Canterbury, namely Dunstan at that date.1 The present church is built over the original S. Mary, which must have been badly ruined. It is unhkely that such ruin dates after Dunstan's time; there is no period when the site is likely to have lain desolate for long enough to achieve it. Hence there is a natural probability that Dunstan found a ruined site, and there is a clear implication in Goscelin's account2 that Dunstan rebuilt it. So much is this so that the great Itahan scholar Rivoira regarded Lyminge church as a dated church of c. A.D. 965,3 as did Sir Giles Gilbert Scott* and Canon Jenkins,5 who knew it better than anyone. Baldwin Brown8 thought it was rebuilt by the Conqueror's archbishop Lanfrane, about 1085. But there is no written evidence for this, although of course he had the site, and in fact built an archiepiscopal palace here of which no trace remains. The old nave was a simple rectangle (Fig. 1) about 60 ft. long and 27 ft. wide, though the western termination is uncertain owing to the loss of the original quoins. The chancel was nearly square measuring about 24 ft. by 20 ft. internally. It is however, the fabric which is so interesting and made Baldwin Brown think it must be Norman. It consists of a rubble of small stones and flint mostly uncut, with some Roman tile. What is remarkable is the effort to treat this decoratively, use being made of beds of canted stones, often miscaUed herring bone, cordons of thin stones and Roman tile, invariably single, plainly imitated from Roman work but not Roman work, and beds of larger stones 1 Arch. Cant,, ix. 2 loe. cit. 5 Lombardio Architecture, 2, 290. * History of Church Architecture. 6 Arch. Cant., ix. ' Arts in Early England, 2. 469. 143 THE CHURCH OF S. MARY AND S. EADBURG, LYMINGE (Fig. 1). None of this work is very consistently carried out, but its intention is quite plain. -Although this is the main fabric it is not universal, and it is clear that the building has undergone many vicissitudes. Some of the intrusions appear (Fig. 1) to be older, e.g. a band of much larger stones, some 20 ins. long, and about five beds high underlying the north wall of the chancel, and about half the east wall. This GOTHIC NORTH AISLE r < > v u o CARDINAL MORTONS THE ARCHED RECESS TOWER ^ s*. *> &*-; C2> » & * /„ 45=^1 •*- =rT Z3 I n < = = 2 Q/?Cs CT-C OOO OOP »?=7?" Or:a § 5 ^ GO Q <(->{=)Oua A - 0=rO Q-£^!s.—dOtS O, SS- J V _ J 1^ W W W . V J W T , . — y ^ * _/* c 3 o o . < = i c i o o c j o oci -_-?