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All Saints' Church, Shuart (/ˈʃoʊɑːt/), in the north-west of the Isle of Thanet, Kent, was established in the Anglo-Saxon period as a chapel of ease for the parish of St. Mary's, Reculver, which was centred on the north-eastern corner of mainland Kent, adjacent to the island. The last church on the site was demolished by the early 17th century, and there is nothing remaining above ground to show that a church once stood there.

The area of the Isle of Thanet where All Saints' Church stood had been settled since the Bronze Age, and land in the west of the Isle of Thanet was given to Reculver in the 7th century. All Saints' Church remained a chapel of ease for the parish of Reculver until the early 14th century, when the parish was broken up to form separate parishes for All Saints', Herne and St Nicholas-at-Wade. The area served by All Saints' was merged with that of St Nicholas-at-Wade, which became the centre of a new parish with All Saints' as its chapel. The churches of All Saints and St Nicholas continued to have a junior relationship with the parish of Reculver, making annual payments to the church there.

All Saints' originally consisted of a nave and chancel, to which a sanctuary was added in the first building phase. The church was extended on three occasions between the 10th and 14th centuries – a period of population growth – to include an aisled nave, a western tower and a northern chapel; its windows featured stained glass. The church was abandoned in the 15th century, presumably because the parish could no longer support two churches. It was demolished, and virtually all of its masonry removed, some of which may have been used in improvements to the church of St Nicholas. The settlement of Shuart remained as an area of local administration into the 17th century, but it is now regarded as a deserted medieval village. There were no visible remains of All Saints' Church by 1723, although land there remained as glebe belonging to the parish of St Nicholas. The site of All Saints' Church was excavated by archaeologists between 1978 and 1979. The main structure had been robbed of its materials leaving only the foundations, from which the archaeologists were able to interpret the history of the building's construction and its form. Among the foundations were discovered numerous stone carvings, floor tiles, remnants of stained glass, and several disturbed graves.

Origin

The place-name "Shuart" is from the Anglo-Saxon language and means a skirted, or cut-off, piece of land. The earliest evidence of human settlement at Shuart dates to the Bronze Age; a rectangular Bronze Age enclosure lies a little to the north of the site of All Saints' Church, and a collection of objects from that period, known as the "Shuart Hoard", was found south-west of the site in the 1980s. Occupation continued through the Iron Age and Roman period. Structures, pottery and glass dating to these times have been found nearby, as well as human burials and cremations.

The site's history in the Anglo-Saxon period begins with the division of the Isle of Thanet into an eastern and western part during the 7th century. The division is attributed in medieval sources to the route taken by a tame female deer that was set free to run across the island by Domne Eafe, thereby marking out the endowment for the nunnery at Minster-in-Thanet founded by Domne Eafe. The route was circuitous, beginning on the north side of the island at Westgate-on-Sea and ending on the south side at Sheriff's Court, halfway between Minster-in-Thanet and Monkton, which are about 1.75 miles (3 km) apart. While land to the east of this route was given to Domne Eafe for her nunnery, which was in existence by 678, land to the west, described broadly as Westanea, or "the western part of the island", was given to the monastery at Reculver by King Hlothhere of Kent in 679. This division of the island is apparent in Domesday Book, which was compiled in 1086, and remained an important feature in the early 15th century, when it was included prominently in a map of the island drawn up by Thomas Elmham.

The monastery at Reculver had been established in 669, and developed as the centre of a "large estate, a manor and a parish". By the early 9th century it had become "extremely wealthy", but it then came under the control of the archbishops of Canterbury. By the 10th century the church and its estate appear to have fallen into royal hands, since King Eadred of England gave them in 949 to Christ Church, Canterbury, now known as Canterbury Cathedral. The Anglo-Saxon charter recording the gift shows that the estate still included land in the west of the Isle of Thanet at that time. Two slightly earlier charters give a more complicated picture: in 943, King Edmund I of England gave land at St Nicholas-at-Wade to a layman, and in the next year he gave the same layman land at Monkton, by means of a charter recording that land to the west and north of Monkton – evidently at Sarre – was nonetheless still regarded as belonging to Reculver. However, while King Edmund I's mother Eadgifu gave lands in Kent, including Monkton, to Christ Church in 961, all of the documents recording these transactions entered the Christ Church archive; and, if the land that Christ Church acquired on the Isle of Thanet in the 10th century was the same as the "Liberty" shown on Thomas Elmham's map from the early 15th century, then the site of All Saints' Church, Shuart, must have been included. Neither Shuart nor St Nicholas-at-Wade are mentioned by name in Domesday Book; but they may have been included in the entry for Reculver, which was then recorded as a hundred in its own right, and was held entirely by the archbishop of Canterbury, but for a portion held from him by a tenant. An analysis of the archbishop's holdings in Domesday Book concludes that All Saints' was among them.

Church and community

A church dedicated to All Saints was established at Shuart some time between 679 and the 10th century. Although Reculver's status as "mother church" for the area may well have dated from the 7th century, and led to the establishment of a church at Shuart then, this chapel might equally have been a development in response to acquisition of land in the area by Christ Church, Canterbury, in the mid-900s. Examination of the building's archaeological remains has failed to provide a more precise date, but a church stood at Shuart for about 100 years or more before the establishment of a nearby church at St Nicholas-at-Wade, since the earliest church there was "almost certainly built in the late 11th century".

First church

The original church of All Saints was a rectangular building aligned on an east-west axis, measuring 52.5 feet (16 m) by 15.75 feet (5 m). It consisted of a western nave and an eastern chancel, with a sanctuary added to the eastern end of the chancel in the first phase of building. The chancel was about 16.4 feet (5 m) long, and the nave was small, taking up only about 9.2 feet (3 m) of the building's overall length. They were connected by a recessed passageway about 9.8 feet (3 m) long but only about 8.9 feet (3 m) across at its narrowest, the foundations for which suggest a heavy structure, perhaps including a vaulted ceiling. The size of the community this church was originally built to serve is unknown, although Domesday Book records the presence of 90 villeins and 25 bordars in the manor of Reculver in 1086, which included land on the Isle of Thanet, but consisted mainly of land in mainland Kent. Those numbers can be multiplied four or five times to account for dependents, since they only represent adult male heads of households; Domesday Book does not say where in the manor they lived.

Expansion

A second phase of building was undertaken between the 10th and 11th centuries, in which the church was enlarged. The west wall was demolished, allowing the nave to be extended to the west by 16.5 feet (5 m), and the passageway between it and the chancel was opened out and replaced with a lighter chancel arch. A third phase followed in the 12th century, when the nave was rebuilt as a much larger structure with north and south aisles, each lined by four columns, and measuring about 30 feet (9 m) wide by 42 feet (13 m) long. A tower about 16.2 feet (5 m) square was added to the western end of the church either at this time or in a fourth phase of building carried out in the 13th century. This fourth phase involved the installation of new windows featuring stained glass, especially at the eastern end of the nave, comparable to the grisaille glass still in the south transept of York Minster that dates from about 1240. A chapel was also added to the north side of the church, measuring about 12.5 feet (4 m) wide by 29.4 feet (9 m) long, with an altar at its eastern end, and paved with tiles about 4 inches (10 cm) square. Flemish floor tiles were also installed in the church, probably in the 15th century.

The expansion of the church coincided with a period of growth in the population of Reculver parish as a whole, which approximately doubled from that of 1086 to more than 1,000 people by the late 13th century. The first record explicitly to mention All Saints' dates from 1284, when the community it served complained to the archbishop of Canterbury that the vicar of Reculver had failed to provide a chaplain to celebrate daily mass. In 1296, the archbishop settled a dispute concerning a duty to pay for repairs to the church, specifying that this was owed by owners of property on and around part of "North Street". In 1310, Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury established St Nicholas-at-Wade as a parish, with All Saints' Church as its chapel, served by a vicar and an assistant priest. According to the document by which that was done, the parish of Reculver had served more than 1,000 parishioners in the time of Winchelsey's predecessor, and this population was "continually increasing", to the extent that a single vicar for the whole parish was inadequate; the new arrangement was also prompted by the inconvenience posed by the distance between these chapels on the Isle of Thanet and their mother church at Reculver. However, the document specified that the vicar of St Nicholas-at-Wade with All Saints' had to pay £3.3s.4d (£3.17) annually to the vicar of Reculver "as a sign of subjection". The vicar also had to go to Reculver "in procession" with his assistant priest and his parishioners every year on Whit Monday– the eighth day after Easter– as well as being present at Reculver for the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of Reculver, on 8 September. The first vicar of St Nicholas-at-Wade with All Saints' is named as Andrew de Grantesete. Archbishop Winchelsey's instructions also set out relative values for the parishes of Reculver and St Nicholas-at-Wade with All Saints', in allocating dues for taxes known as "clerical tenths"; Reculver was liable for 12s.1d (60.5p), compared to St Nicholas-at-Wade with All Saints' 11s.4d (57p).

Decline

Thomas Elmham's map of the Isle of Thanet, drawn in the early 15th century, shows the church with its tower, but a map of 1596, which shows churches "as they actually appeared", shows a church without a tower. Examination of the church's foundations indicates that it was probably a ruin by the middle of the 15th century and was demolished, but was replaced by a smaller structure, without a tower, up to 20 years later. It may be that material from All Saints' Church was used in the construction of a new clerestory for the nave of St Nicholas' church in the late 15th century, and the medieval baptismal font now in Reculver's parish church at Hillborough may have come from All Saints'. By 1630 there was no church: in that year, the vicar and churchwardens of St Nicholas-at-Wade reported the existence of glebe of 1.5 acres (1 ha) called "Allhallows close, in part of which antiently stood the chapel of All Saints, or Alhallows"; and, in 1723, antiquarian John Lewis wrote that the church was "now so entirely demolished, with all the fences around it, that there are no marks of either of them."

The decline of All Saints' Church and the community of Shuart may have begun with the Black Death of 1348–9, and the abandonment of the church presumably arose through the cost of keeping two churches– All Saints and St Nicholas– in what had become a "remote, rural parish". While tax records of the 15th century show that the inhabitants of Shuart had then included men of the Cinque Port of Dover, the settlement continued to be represented in tax records in the 17th century. In 1624 it was assessed as a "vill" at the rate of £4.6.4d (£4.32) for the archaic taxes known as "fifteenths and tenths"– this rate had been fixed in 1334, and may be compared with the rate for St Nicholas-at-Wade of £10.7s (£10.35), and it appears as a borgh, or tithing, in records of the Hearth Tax for 1673. But by 1723 the settlement was a matter of historical record only; John Lewis wrote then that " seems as if anciently a Vill or Town belonged to ", and the only building recorded by Lewis was a "good farm house". Today Shuart is considered a deserted medieval village.

Excavation

The site of All Saints' Church, Shuart, was recorded on Ordnance Survey maps in the 19th century, and was confirmed in the mid-20th century through aerial photography by Kenneth St Joseph. On the north side of a road between Shuart Farm and Nether Hale Farm, the site is on farmland now owned by St John's College, Cambridge, and was excavated with the college's permission by the Thanet Archaeological Unit between 1978 and 1979.

The only surviving part of the main structure was its foundations of rammed chalk, which nonetheless allowed a construction history to be developed, but various elements of the structure were also found. These included mortar flooring, glazed floor tiles, green sandstone, Caen stone, Quarr stone from the Isle of Wight and stained glass. Among stone fragments were numerous carvings, including "two small delicately carved pieces of foliage which are certainly twelfth-century work". Among the rubble in the foundation trenches fragments of mortar showing the imprint of barnacles were found, indicating that some of the stone used in the structure had been fetched from the sea. A number of graves were also discovered, one of which had been covered by an unmarked stone, but they had been robbed and filled with rubble containing fragments of human bone. Two of the graves had been dug between the demolition of the church and the construction of a smaller, short-lived replacement, in the 15th century. While virtually all of the building's structure had been robbed, presumably for use elsewhere, much of what remained had been destroyed by ploughing.

References

Footnotes

1. The multiplication indicated would give a peasant population for the whole of the estate centred on Reculver in 1086 of 460–575 people.
2. "This is an early instance of a compulsory church rate for the repair of the fabric." There is no "North Street" in the vicinity today.
3. "This was a large sum in those days, and there is room to suppose that, at that time, this was much better in proportion, than it is now."
4. Graham 1944, p. 11 gives this date as 2 September, apparently in error: see e.g. Farmer, D.H. (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (3rd ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 327, ISBN 0-19-283069-4.
5. For clerical tenths, see Lunt, W.E. (1916), "Collectors' Accounts for the Clerical Tenth levied in England by Order of Nicholas IV", English Historical Review 31 (121), pp. 102–19.
6. For fifteenths and tenths, see "Taxation records before 1689", 4.2 Fifteenths and Tenths, 1334–1624. (undated). The National Archives. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
7. The site of All Saints' Church is marked on the 1877 OS 1:10,560 scale (6 inch/mile) map of Kent, about 330 yards (302 m) east of Shuart, and land between Shuart and the church site is marked there as "Glebe". The current OS grid reference is TR273679.

Notes

1. Glover 1976, p. 173.
2. "Monument No. 467021" & "Monument No. 467068". (2007). English Heritage PastScape. Retrieved 22 March 2012; "Bronze Age 2000– 700 BC". (2006). Trust for Thanet Archaeology. Retrieved 22 March 2012; Perkins, D.R.J. (1988), "A Late Bronze Age Hoard From Shuart", Archaeologia Cantiana 106, pp. 201–4.
3. "Monument No. 1012305", "Monument No. 466885", "Monument No. 467005", "Monument No. 467070" & "Monument No. 467076". (2007). English Heritage PastScape. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
4. Rollason 1982, pp. 10–1; Hasted 1800b.
5. Rollason 1982, p. 10.
6. Rollason 1979, pp. 13–5; Sawyer 1968, S 8; "S 8". (2012). The Electronic Sawyer. Retrieved 23 March 2012; Kelly 2008, p. 74; Jenkins 1981, p. 152.
7. Rollason 1979, p. 13; Jenkins 1981, p. 152; "Mappa Thaneti Insule". (2012). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
8. Gough 2001.
9. Blair 2005, p. 123.
10. Kelly 2008, p. 80.
11. Kelly 2008, pp. 81–2.
12. Sawyer 1968, S 546; "S 546". (2012). The Electronic Sawyer. Retrieved 23 March 2012; Kelly 2008, p. 74.
13. Sawyer 1968, S 512; "S 512". (2012). The Electronic Sawyer. Retrieved 23 March 2012; Kelly 2008, p. 74(note).
14. Sawyer 1968, S 497; "S 497". (2012). The Electronic Sawyer. Retrieved 23 March 2012; Kelly 2008, p. 74.
15. Sawyer 1968, S 497, 512, 546, 1212; "S 1212". (2012). The Electronic Sawyer. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
16. Jenkins 1981, p. 152; "Mappa Thaneti Insule". (2012). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
17. Williams & Martin 2002, p. 8.
18. Williams & Martin 2002, p. 8; Flight 2010, p. 162.
19. Flight 2010, pp. 160, 162.
20. ^ Jenkins 1981, p. 152.
21. Jenkins 1981, p. 152; "All Saints Church". (2007). English Heritage PastScape. Retrieved 1 April 2012.
22. Tatton-Brown 1993.
23. Jenkins 1981, pp. 147–9.
24. ^ Jenkins 1981, p. 149.
25. Williams & Martin 2002, p. 8; Eales 1992, p. 21.
26. Jenkins 1981, pp. 149, 152.
27. ^ Jenkins 1981, pp. 149, 152 & Fig. 26.
28. Jenkins 1981, p. 153 & Fig. 29.
29. Jenkins 1981, pp. 149–50, 153 & Fig. 29.
30. ^ Jenkins 1981, p. 154.
31. Graham 1944, p. 1.
32. Graham 1944, p. 2.
33. Graham 1944, pp. 2–3.
34. Graham 1944, p. 3.
35. Gough 1992, pp. 91–2; Graham 1944, pp. 10–1.
36. ^ Graham 1944, p. 10.
37. Hasted 1800a.
38. ^ Lewis 1723, p. 30.
39. ^ Graham 1944, p. 11.
40. Jenkins 1981, pp. 153–4.
41. Jenkins 1981, p. 154; Tatton-Brown 1993.
42. "Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Hillborough". (2009). Kent County Council. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
43. Hasted 1800b.
44. ^ Lewis 1723, p. 33.
45. "E179/227/103". (not dated). The National Archives. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
46. Lambarde 1596, p. 25 "E179/127/582". (not dated). The National Archives. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
47. "E179/129/746". (not dated). The National Archives. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
48. "Monument No. 467017". (2007). English Heritage PastScape. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
49. ^ Jenkins 1981, p. 147.
50. Jenkins 1981, pp. 147–50.
51. Jenkins 1981, pp. 149–54.
52. Jenkins 1981, pp. 149–50.
53. Jenkins 1981, pp. 150, 154.
54. Jenkins 1981, pp. 149–50, 154.

Bibliography

• Blair, J. (2005), The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-822695-6
• Eales, R. (1992), "An Introduction to the Kent Domesday", in Eales, R.; Thorn, F. (eds.), The Kent Domesday, Alecto, pp. 1–49, ISBN 0-948459-98-0
• Flight, C. (2010), The Survey of Kent: Documents Relating to the Survey of the County Conducted in 1086, BAR British Series, vol. 506, Archaeopress, ISBN 978-1-4073-0541-7
• Glover, J. (1976), The Place Names of Kent, Batsford, ISBN 978-0-7134-3069-1
• Gough, H. (1992), "Eadred's Charter of AD 949 and the Extent of the Monastic Estate at Reculver, Kent", in Ramsay, N.; Sparks, M.; Tatton-Brown, T. (eds.), St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, Boydell, pp. 89–102, ISBN 978-0-85115-301-8
• Gough, H. (2001), "The Two Names of a Reculver Inn", Waterways Caravan Park http://web.archive.org/web/20010308153934/http://www.waterways-caravan-park.co.uk/reculver_inn.htm {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Graham, R. (1944), "Sidelights on the Rectors and Parishioners of Reculver from the Register of Archbishop Winchelsey", Archaeologia Cantiana, 57, Kent Archaeological Society: 1–12, ISSN 0066-5894
• Hasted, E. (1800a), The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, vol. 9, Bristow, OCLC 5072512
• Hasted, E. (1800b), The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, vol. 10, Bristow, OCLC 5072512
• Jenkins, F. (1981), "The church of All Saints, Shuart in the Isle of Thanet", in Detsicas, A. (ed.), Collectanea Historica: Essays in Memory of Stuart Rigold, Kent Archaeological Society, pp. 147–54, ISBN 0-906746-02-7
• Kelly, S. (2008), "Reculver Minster and its early Charters", in Barrow, J.; Wareham, A. (eds.), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, Ashgate, ISBN 978-0-7546-5120-8
• Lambarde, W. (1596) , A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the Description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre, Bollisant, OCLC 65329201
• Lewis, J. (1723), The History and Antiquities Ecclesiastical and Civil of the Isle of Tenet in Kent, OCLC 13116471
• Rollason, D.W. (1979), "The date of the parish boundary of Minster-in-Thanet (Kent)", Archaeologia Cantiana, 95, Kent Archaeological Society: 7–17, ISSN 0066-5894
• Rollason, D.W. (1982), The Mildrith Legend: A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England, Leicester University Press, ISBN 0-7185-1201-4
• Sawyer, P.H. (1968), Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society, OCLC 460956
• Tatton-Brown, T. (1993), "St Nicholas Church, St Nicholas at Wade TR 265 667", Canterbury Diocese: Historical and Archaeological Survey, Kent Archaeological Society
• Williams, A.; Martin, G.H., eds. (2002) , Domesday Book A Complete Translation, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-051535-6

51°21′53″N 1°15′41″E / 51.3646°N 1.2615°E / 51.3646; 1.2615

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• Archaeological sites in Kent
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