All Saints' Church, Shuart facts for kids
All Saints' Church, Shuart, was once a church located in the north-west of the Isle of Thanet, Kent, in south-east England. It was built a very long time ago, during the Anglo-Saxon period. This church was a "chapel of ease," meaning it was a smaller church built to help people who lived far from their main parish church. The main church for this area was St Mary's Church, Reculver, located on the mainland next to the Isle of Thanet.
Back then, the Isle of Thanet was separated from the mainland by a sea channel called the Wantsum Channel. The last church building at Shuart was taken down in the early 1600s. Today, you won't see any signs above ground that a church ever stood there.
People have lived in the Shuart area of the Isle of Thanet since the Bronze Age. In the 600s, land in western Thanet was given to the church at Reculver. All Saints' Church remained a chapel for Reculver until the early 1300s. At that time, the large Reculver parish was divided into smaller ones, including Herne and St Nicholas-at-Wade.
The area served by All Saints' became part of the new St Nicholas-at-Wade parish. All Saints' then became a chapel for St Nicholas' church. Even so, both All Saints' and St Nicholas' churches still had a connection to Reculver. They made yearly payments to the Reculver church.
All Saints' Church first had a nave (the main part where people sit) and a chancel (the area near the altar). A sanctuary was added to the chancel early on. The church was made bigger three times between the 900s and 1300s. This was a time when more people were living in the area.
The church eventually included aisles, a western tower, and a northern chapel. Its windows had beautiful stained glass. The church was abandoned in the 1400s, probably because the community couldn't afford to support two churches. It was taken down, and most of its stones were removed. Some of these stones might have been used to improve St Nicholas' church.
The settlement of Shuart continued to be a local administrative area until the 1600s. However, it is now considered a deserted medieval village, meaning a village that was abandoned long ago. By 1723, there were no visible remains of All Saints' Church. Yet, the land where it stood remained church property for the St Nicholas parish.
Archaeologists dug up the site of All Saints' Church between 1978 and 1979. Most of the church's structure had been taken away, leaving only the foundations. From these foundations, archaeologists learned about how the building was constructed and what it looked like. They also found many stone carvings, floor tiles, pieces of stained glass, and several disturbed graves.
Contents
The Church's Beginning
The name "Shuart" comes from the Anglo-Saxon language. It means a piece of land that is "skirted" or "cut off." The earliest signs of people living at Shuart are from the Bronze Age. A Bronze Age enclosure (an area surrounded by a fence or wall) is located north of the church site. Also, a collection of Bronze Age objects, called the "Shuart Hoard," was found nearby in the 1980s.
People continued to live here through the Iron Age and the Roman period. Buildings, pottery, and glass from these times have been found close by. Human burials and cremations have also been discovered.
The history of the site during the Anglo-Saxon period started in the 600s. The Isle of Thanet was divided into eastern and western parts. This division is said to have been marked by a tame female deer. The deer was set free by Æbbe, who founded a monastery at Minster-in-Thanet. The deer's path marked the land given to her monastery.
Land to the east of this path was given to Æbbe's monastery. Land to the west, called Westanea (meaning "the western part of the island"), was given to the monastery at Reculver. This happened in 679, given by King Hlothhere of Kent. This division of the island was still important centuries later. It was even shown on a map of the island drawn in the early 1400s by Thomas Elmham.
The monastery at Reculver was started in 669. It grew into a large estate, a manor, and a parish. By the early 800s, it was very wealthy. Later, it came under the control of the archbishops of Canterbury. By the 900s, the church and its land seemed to belong to the king. In 949, King Eadred of England gave them to Christ Church, Canterbury, which is now Canterbury Cathedral.
Old documents show that the Reculver estate still included land in western Thanet at that time. Other documents from the 940s show a more complex picture. For example, King Edmund I of England gave land at St Nicholas-at-Wade to a person in 943. The next year, he gave the same person land at Monkton. These documents suggest that land west and north of Monkton, likely at Sarre, still belonged to Reculver.
All these land records ended up in the Christ Church archive. If the land Christ Church got in the 900s was the same as the "Liberty" shown on Thomas Elmham's map, then the site of All Saints' Church, Shuart, must have been included. Shuart and St Nicholas-at-Wade are not named in the Domesday Book (a survey from 1086). However, they might have been part of the entry for Reculver. Reculver was then a hundred (a type of administrative area) and was mostly owned by the archbishop of Canterbury.
Church and Community Life
A church named All Saints was built at Shuart sometime between 679 and the 900s. The main church at Reculver had been important for the area since the 600s. This might have led to a church being built at Shuart then. Or, it could have been built after Christ Church, Canterbury, gained land in the area in the mid-900s.
Archaeological digs haven't given a more exact date. But a church stood at Shuart for about 100 years or more before a church was built at St Nicholas-at-Wade. The first church there was likely built in the late 1000s.
The First Church Building
The original All Saints' Church was a rectangular building. It was about 52.5 feet (16 meters) long and 15.75 feet (4.8 meters) wide. It was built facing east-west. It had a western nave and an eastern chancel. A sanctuary was added to the eastern end of the chancel in the first stage of building.
The chancel was about 16.4 feet (5 meters) long. The nave was small, only about 9.2 feet (2.8 meters) of the building's total length. They were connected by a narrow passageway. The foundations of this passageway suggest it held a heavy structure, perhaps with a vaulted (arched) ceiling.
We don't know how many people this first church was built for. The Domesday Book from 1086 lists 90 villeins (peasants tied to the land) and 25 bordars (small farmers) in the Reculver manor. This manor included land on the Isle of Thanet. These numbers only count adult male heads of households. You can multiply them by four or five to estimate the total population, including family members. The Domesday Book does not say where in the manor these people lived.
Making the Church Bigger
The church was expanded in a second building phase between the 900s and 1000s. The west wall was taken down, and the nave was made 16.5 feet (5 meters) longer to the west. The passageway between the nave and chancel was opened up and replaced with a lighter chancel arch.
A third phase of building happened in the 1100s. The nave was rebuilt as a much larger structure. It now had north and south aisles, each with four columns. This new nave was about 30 feet (9.1 meters) wide and 42 feet (12.8 meters) long.
A tower, about 16.2 feet (4.9 meters) square, was added to the western end of the church. This happened either during the third phase or in a fourth phase in the 1200s. This fourth phase also included putting in new windows with stained glass. The glass at the eastern end of the nave was similar to the grisaille (grey-toned) glass still found in York Minster from around 1240.
A chapel was also added to the north side of the church. It was about 12.5 feet (3.8 meters) wide and 29.4 feet (9 meters) long. It had an altar at its eastern end and was paved with tiles about 4 inches (10 cm) square. Flemish floor tiles were also installed in the church, probably in the 1400s.
The church's expansion happened as the population of Reculver parish grew. By the late 1200s, it had more than 3,000 people. The first clear mention of All Saints' Church is from 1284. At that time, the people it served complained to the archbishop of Canterbury. They said the vicar (priest) of Reculver had not provided a chaplain to hold daily mass.
In 1296, the archbishop settled a disagreement about who should pay for church repairs. He said that property owners on and around "North Street" had to pay. In 1310, Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury made St Nicholas-at-Wade a separate parish. All Saints' Church became its chapel, served by a vicar and an assistant priest.
This change happened because the Reculver parish had grown too large for one vicar to manage. Also, Thanet was still an island, and it was inconvenient for people to travel from these chapels on the Isle of Thanet to their main church at Reculver. However, the new vicar of St Nicholas-at-Wade had to pay £3.3s.4d (about £3.17) each year to the Reculver vicar. This was a sign of their continued connection.
The vicar of St Nicholas-at-Wade also had to go to Reculver in a procession with his assistant priest and parishioners every year on Whit Monday (the eighth day after Easter). They also had to be present at Reculver for the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on September 8th. This saint was the patron saint of Reculver. These visits continued into the mid-1500s. The St Nicholas-at-Wade parish was still making annual payments to Reculver in the 1800s.
Archbishop Winchelsey's instructions also set out how much each parish should pay in church taxes called "clerical tenths." Reculver had to pay 12s.1d (60.5p), while St Nicholas-at-Wade paid 11s.4d (57p). The first vicar of St Nicholas-at-Wade was Andrew de Grantesete.
The Church's Decline
Thomas Elmham's map from the early 1400s shows All Saints' Church with its tower. But a map from 1596 by Philip Symonson, which showed churches "as they actually appeared," showed a church without a tower.
Archaeological studies of the church's foundations suggest it was probably a ruin by the mid-1400s and was taken down. A smaller building, without a tower, might have replaced it up to 20 years later. It's possible that stones from All Saints' Church were used to build a new clerestory (an upper part of a nave with windows) for St Nicholas' church in the late 1400s. The old baptismal font now in Reculver's parish church, St Mary the Virgin at Hillborough, likely came from All Saints'.
By 1630, there was no church left. In that year, the vicar and churchwardens of St Nicholas-at-Wade reported that there was 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of church land called "Allhallows close." They said that "anciently stood the chapel of All Saints, or Alhallows" on part of this land. In 1723, a historian named John Lewis wrote that the church was "now so entirely demolished... that there are no marks of either of them."
The decline of All Saints' Church and the community of Shuart might have started with the Black Death in 1348–49. This terrible plague caused the population of England to drop by about 40%. Also, the nearby Wantsum Channel began to close up. This channel had been a popular route for sea trade between England and Europe in medieval times. It probably brought a lot of wealth to Kent. But the channel gradually became blocked by silt (mud and sand).
While tax records from the 1400s show that people from the Cinque Port of Dover lived in Shuart, shipping through the Wantsum Channel stopped by the late 1400s. By the mid-1500s, the northern part near Shuart was just a creek (a small inlet). The church was likely abandoned because it cost too much to keep two churches—All Saints and St Nicholas—in what had become a "remote, rural parish."
Shuart was still mentioned in tax records in the 1600s. In 1624, it was taxed as a "vill" (a small village) at £4.6s.4d (about £4.32). This was for old taxes called "fifteenths and tenths." For comparison, St Nicholas-at-Wade was taxed at £10.7s (about £10.35). Shuart also appeared as a "borgh" or tithing (a small administrative unit) in Hearth Tax records for 1673.
However, the parish as a whole was shrinking. In 1563, St Nicholas-at-Wade parish was the second smallest on the Isle of Thanet, with only 33 households. By 1800, there were even fewer. By 1723, the settlement of Shuart was only a historical memory. John Lewis wrote that it "seems as if anciently a Vill or Town belonged to [the chapel of All Saints]." The only building Lewis recorded was a "good farm house." This farmhouse was built in the late 1600s and is still standing today. But otherwise, Shuart is now considered a deserted medieval village.
Archaeological Digs
The site of All Saints' Church, Shuart, was marked on Ordnance Survey maps in the 1800s. Its location was confirmed in the mid-1900s using aerial photography by Kenneth St Joseph. The site is on farmland owned by St John's College, Cambridge, north of a road between Shuart Farm and Nether Hale Farm. The Thanet Archaeological Unit dug up the site with the college's permission between 1978 and 1979.
The only part of the main church structure that survived was its foundations, made of packed chalk. However, these foundations allowed archaeologists to figure out the history of how the building was constructed. Various parts of the structure were also found. These included mortar flooring, glazed floor tiles, green sandstone, Caen stone, and Quarr stone from the Isle of Wight. Pieces of stained glass were also discovered.
Among the stone fragments were many carvings. These included "two small delicately carved pieces of foliage which are certainly twelfth-century work." Fragments of mortar with barnacle imprints were found in the rubble of the foundation trenches. This shows that some of the stone used in the church came from the shoreline.
A number of graves were also found. One of them had been covered by an unmarked stone. However, the graves had been disturbed and filled with rubble containing pieces of human bone. Two of the graves were dug between the time the church was taken down and when a smaller, short-lived replacement was built in the 1400s. Almost all of the building's structure had been taken away, probably to be used elsewhere. Much of what remained had been destroyed by ploughing.
Images for kids
-
Map of north-east Kent, showing Shuart, St Nicholas-at-Wade, Reculver, and Canterbury.
-
This map from the 1400s shows All Saints' Church as "Om[ni]u[m] S[an]c[t]orum." The Wantsum Channel separates the island from mainland Kent.
-
This Baptismal font is in the Church of St Mary the Virgin at Hillborough. It probably came from All Saints' Church.
See Also
- Deserted medieval village
- Isle of Thanet
- Reculver
- St Nicholas-at-Wade
