Image: Reculver church ruin interior

Description: Interior of the ruined church of St Mary, Reculver, looking eastwards from the elevated gallery between the surviving towers. The main feature is the outline of the original church of 699, excavated by archaeologists in the 1920s and marked mostly by concrete strips in the grass. The curved strip near the top of the image represents the apse. Below that, two circles of concrete represent the foundations of two columns that formed a triple chancel arch. To the left and right of those, and slightly beyond, are doorways into the north and south porticus, which themselves had external doors on their furthest, eastern sides, visible as gaps in the corresponding strips of concrete. King Eadberht II of Kent was buried in the right-hand, southern porticus in the 760s. From the apse, the north and south walls of the original church extend towards the viewer as far as the doorways to the porticus, but then are almost entirely represented by concrete strips running to the bottom of the image, where they meet the western wall. This runs across the bottom of the image, the grassy gap indicating the western entrance to the church. The parched grass in the central, nave area of the church indicates the presence of the remaining area of the original concrete floor. Between the apse and the furthest, eastern wall of the chancel lies a burial vault created for Sir Cavalliero Maycote, who lived at Brook, Reculver, in the reign of Elizabeth I. The remainder of the standing walls and strips of concrete represent work of the 8th and 13th centuries, apart from the towers and west front, including the gallery from which this photograph was taken, which were added in the 12th. Part of the north tower, which held a ring of four bells until the church was mostly demolished in 1809, is visible on the extreme left of the image.
Title: Reculver church ruin interior
Credit: Own work
Author: Nortonius
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes