Dean Stanley held the belief, once shared by many antiquaries, that in St Martin’s at Canterbury we have a veritable monument of early British Christianity--a monument, moreover, erected over a pagan temple[67]. Bede asserts that there
FIG. 6. Chancel of Lyminge Church, Kent. In the churchyard, to the right hand, is a portion of the foundations of a seventh-century chapel, composed of re-arranged Roman materials. The church seems to occupy the site of a villa. ]
FIG. 7. Portion of chancel wall, south side, St Martin’s Church, Canterbury. Roman tiles are seen abundantly in the wall on the right, and in the round arch; they are also bonded into the wall on the left. The wall is mainly seventh-century work, but the round-headed doorway is later, and the buttress has been modernized. The flat-headed doorway is probably original. ]
was a church on this spot in Roman times, and that the building which existed in his day retained relics of the older structure[68]. In spite of this tradition, the popular belief is only doubtfully tenable. The site is old, and there may have been unbroken continuity, but the present building, though doubtless largely composed of the original materials, has been altogether re-arranged[69] (Fig. 7). An exception may perhaps be made for portions of the western nave, which Professor Baldwin Brown considers may represent early work. St Pancras, at Canterbury, by some writers judged to be older than St Martin’s, must, under reserve, be given up, for similar reasons. Foundations, nearly complete, of a single-celled apsidal church have been revealed to the excavator, but the actual persistence of work above the surface is not demonstrated[70]. Other churches put forward are Ribchester, in Lancashire[71], and the chapel of St Peter’s-on-the-Wall, at Bradwell (_Othona_), in Essex. St Peter’s Chapel represents a barnlike building, of which the materials were evidently quarried from the adjacent fortress, but, once again, proof of continuity is lacking.
St Joseph’s Chapel, at Glastonbury Abbey, presents us with an interesting case of probable retention of site, though not necessarily of continuous buildings. The earlier history of Glastonbury is, unfortunately, mainly a history of legends and traditions. We may well discredit the tale, told by the imaginative William of Malmesbury, a millennium after the alleged event, that, so early as the first century of the Christian era, a chapel constructed of osiers existed at this spot. That some kind of primitive church or oratory, with walls of wattle, and a roof of reeds, was set up during the Roman occupation is, however, very probable, and it may fairly be supposed, though it cannot be proved, that no break had occurred when the Saxon abbey was founded[72].