Welcome to the old site of St Mary de Castro Church

Welcome to the old site of St Mary de Castro Church. . You are in the former yard of St Mary de Castro church -- which stood on, or near, this spot and which was built only two decades after St Augustine landed in Kent in AD597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity., This early church was erected about AD618 by Eadbald, the ruler of Kent and the son of King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha., Stepping forward to 1470, a man called Roger Ridley left £4 (this is nearly £3,000 in today's money) in his will for the repair of the church, which had probably fallen into decay in the second half of the 15th century. Three of its bells were sold to the parishioners of Lower Hardres in 1542 and it may have been partially demolished then., The chancel may still have been standing in the early 17th century but appears to have been levelled by about 1750. The historian William Somner (1640) said the church had "long fallen into nothingness" and by 1684 the parish had been united with nearby St Mildred's., The 18th and 19th century gravestones you see along the wall here date from when this park was a burial ground for St Mildred's, and were in place until after the Second World War., A building on the site of the White Hart is clearly shown on a survey of 1752, and it may have been built as a rectory until it was replaced or modified and first licensed as an inn in March 1837. A trap door access to the cellar is said to be the body chute for sliding coffins to the mortuary below.