Beautiful Britain | Page 4

ecclesiastical control, for if in the slow
grinding of the wheels of Time there should cease to be a State Church
in this land, the organization of the churches holding to the Elizabethan
form of worship will no doubt continue to be centred and focussed at
Canterbury.
[Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH
WEST. The state central or "Bell Harry" Tower is one of the most
beautiful works of the Perpendicular period in existence.]
As the first church mentioned in history associated with Christian
worship St. Martin's occupies a unique position, and yet the fabric of
the little building does not conclusively prove that it is even in part the
actual church of this fascinating period. Cautious archæologists,
represented by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, regard the earliest work in St.
Martin's as belonging to the Saxon period, Roman materials having
merely been worked up by the later builders. On the other hand, there
are various careful antiquaries who are willing to accept the oldest parts
of the church as Roman, and claim that St. Martin's is a Christian
church put up during the Roman occupation. Perhaps the problem will
be solved by further discoveries, but until then it seems wiser to regard
St. Martin's as being in part a very early Saxon building, very probably
standing on the site of the restored Roman church in which Queen
Bertha worshipped before Augustine's arrival. Even if it were possible

to state that parts of the walls were Roman, it would not be an easy
matter to say whether the building were older than the two early
Christian churches of North Cornwall, preserved through the ages by
the drifting sand of that exposed coastline; therefore, to write, as so
many have done, that St. Martin's is the oldest Christian church in
England, is not justified by the facts. Besides St. Martin's, William
Thorne, a fourteenth century chronicler, makes mention of "a temple or
idol-place where Ethelbert had been wont to pray and to sacrifice to
demons," and this building, instead of being destroyed, was purged
from its defilements and idols and hallowed by Augustine when he
dedicated it to St. Pancras the Roman boy-martyr. When the site, about
halfway between St. Martin's and St. Augustine's, was excavated in
1901, it was found to possess a nave about 47 feet long by 26 feet wide,
with an apsidal chancel nearly the same width and depth separated from
the nave by four Roman columns, and Mr. W.H. St. John Hope, of the
Society of Antiquaries, who carried out the operations with Canon
Routledge, has suggested that this may be the first church built by
Augustine out of Roman materials ready to hand, while the larger one,
dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, a little to the west, was slowly being
constructed. It was not finished when, in 605, Augustine died, and
eventually the dedication included the canonized first archbishop of the
English Church, who was buried in the building when it was finished.
The other great figures of the period--Ethelbert and his Queen, and her
chaplain--were also laid to rest in the church. A few years ago it was
only possible to form an idea of this large structure from the Norman
north wall of the nave and part of the north-west tower, but now that
nearly the whole of the eastern end has been excavated one can see the
underground portion of practically all the east end and part of the north
transept. Ethelbert's son, Eadbald, having been converted two years
after his accession, built another church east of that of Saints Peter and
Paul, and this was joined on to the abbey church when the east end was
extended about the time of the Norman Conquest. At the same time as
he began the monastery subsequently called after him, Augustine
appears to have made his headquarters close to another early Christian
church within the walls of the Saxon city. This, according to Bede, was
hallowed "in the name of the Holy Saviour," and thus arose the name
Christ Church--the name the cathedral now bears. In these early times

there were therefore five Christian churches either restored or under
construction, and they were all roughly in a line running east and west.
First there was Christ Church and Augustine's residence--eventually the
priory--within the walls, then the embryo abbey of Saints Peter and
Paul, with the chapel of St. Mary a little to the east. Farther still was the
church of St. Pancras, and farthest from the city walls, on its little hill,
St. Martin's. There are other traces of Saxon work in the church of St.
Mildred near the castle, but this is much later than anything that has
been discovered on the other sites, and Dr. Cox points out what he
claims as pre-Conquest work