St. Augustine in Kent

St. Augustine in Kent. . , Fordwich , , Who was St. Augustine? , Augustine, a monk from Rome, was sent by Pope Gregory to bring Christianity to Britain. He landed in Kent in AD 597 with forty followers and set up his mission in Canterbury. Within a few months Ethelbert, the king of Kent, and thousands of local people had been baptised. Christianity then spread through southern England. Augustine remained in Canterbury until his death probably in AD 604 or 605. He founded a monastery which flourished for nearly a thousand years and became a famous place of learning. He also established a cathedral which was rebuilt on a grand scale after the Norman Conquest. Canterbury remains the religious capital of England to this day., The Fordwich Stone , Fordwich church contains 2 large block of stone known locally as St. Augustine's tomb. It may have been carved in Norman times us a dummy stone to mark the site of Augustine's original burial place in Canterbury. His bones, along with those of other saints, were gathered together behind the altar of the Abbey in 1091. The stone was taken to Fordwich in the middle of the sixteenth century, then returned to Canterbury and bought back to its present position in Fordwich in 1892., Anglo-Saxon Fordwich , In Anglo-Saxon times the estuary of the river Stour extended inland as far as Canterbury. Fordwich, or Forewic, probably grew up as a string of dwellings set on a bank a short distance from the water's edge. The roads to the north, which the Roman soldiers once trod, still link Canterbury with Richborough and Reculver. As the river estuary silted up Fordwich proved a convenient crossing place. Later it became a flourishing port when stone and other goods were unloaded from abroad., (French not transcribed)