A History of St. Augustine Northbourne

A brief history of the church based on the work of Arthur Peel (c 1994)

This beautiful old church has a long history, and is on the site of one or the oldest places of Christian worship in England. St. Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet in AD597 some five mile. away, and in 618 Edbald, newly crowned King of Kent, gave land at Northbourne. (thirty ploughs worth) to St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.
Peel has alleged that a church was built here in 640, only 43 years after Christianity was introduced to England, although corroboration of this has yet to be finalised. This church was pulled down and a larger Anglo-Saxon church was built on the site. In about 1120 this was modernised in the late Norman style, with the doors, windows and arches being re-built. The North door leading to the vestry has a roundheaded arch, found during the restoration of the vestry in the sixties, and that arch has been identified as Saxon. Fragments of the first Saxon church, including 'barley twist.' mouldings, can be seen built into the wall of the present church.
It was not unusual for an early church, if structurally sound, to be updated and often added to with as much of the original building used in the new as possible to save money, so the main structure of this church is over one thousand years old.

THE PORCH
Inside the porch there is a fine Norman door. The mass dial on the left of the door as you go in is one of the earliest known. A peg was put in the hole and the bell rung for the service when the shadow fell down the appropriate line. The porch itself is a Victorian addition.

THE NAVE
The nave is quite plain with three original Norman round-headed windows, a replacement norman style window, the remaining windows being in the Early English style, as is the West door. Most of the roof timbers are thought to date from the late 15th century, while the tie beams and wall plates are early medieval and could be original Norman.

THE TOWER
The tower was built as a village refuge in the tradition that 8tarted in the reign of Alfred the Great, when the King ordered the construction of stone churches with tiled roofs and refuge towers as village fortresses against the attacks of the Danes. Most of these refuge towers had access from the outside, halfway up. The 'ghost outline of the entrance on the North side of the tower, and part of the one remaining step set in the exterior of the North Transept are visible when standing in the churchyard. After thin access to the tower was by a stone turret stair built on the North West corner of the tower with the entrance behind the pulpit. This was removed some time during the last two hundred years and replaced by the present iron stair. The last occasion when the beacon was lit on the tower and the bells rung in warning was in 1457 when the French attacked Sandwich. It is recorded in a history of Sandwich that the signals sped so fast from church tower to church tower that the men of Rye were called to arms to march to the relief of Sandwich only a matter of minutes after the beacon was lit on St. Clements church tower in Sandwich. The last time the tower saw "war service was in 1940 as an observation post~for the field guns dug in on the Almonry Neadow,'against the churchyard wall. The Royal Artillery observer' on the' tower had a fine view of the'coast from Sandwich Bay to South Deal. The bells hung silent, ready to ring~out the warning if the enemy landed; the attack that never came. The wheel lamp hung below the tower was designed by the late Lord Northbourne and constructed by the village blacksmith Mr. Kenneth Butcher.. The four arches that carry the tower are Norman, three. being round-headed and that leading into the Nave being pointed It shows the first indication of the transition from Norman to Early English.

THE LADY CHAPEL
The Lady Chapel contains the Sandy. Memorial and family vault. The memorial was, apparently, built in the lifetime of Sir Edwin Sandys and the effigies are reputed to be sculpted from life. The couple are shown lying in their four' poster' bed, though the folds of the material of Lady Sandy's dress show that she stood for the portrait. Sir Edwin was MP for Sandwich during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I and lived at Northbourne Court. He believed in free Parliament elected by universal suffrage, and was twice imprisoned in the Tower of London for his' "revolutionary" view,. He became treasurer of the Virginia Company and obtained the Royal Assent from James I for a Constitution for the Company that be drew up. This resulted in the first freely elected government in the world, in Virginia. Sir Edwin's constitution later became the pattern for the Constitution of the United States of America, when the Thirteen Colonies obtained their independence. A tablet on the west wall of the chapel was set there by the American and British Commonwealth Association

THE CHANCEL
The Chancel was largely reconstructed in the 1860's by the Hannam family then living at Northbourne Court. The centre roundel of the East Window is all that survives of the memorial window put in by Charles Hannam and later damaged by storm. The two windows above are Norman. Traces of the priest's door in the South Chancel wall can still be seen.

THE BELLS
There are six bells in the bell chamber. They are unusual in that the frame from which they are hung is set diagonally, from corner to corner, instead of across the tower.