All Saints' Church, Shuart

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 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.

[4] The site's history in the Anglo-Saxon period begins with the division of the Isle of Thanet into eastern and western parts 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 Æbbe, founder and first abbess of the double monastery at Minster-in-Thanet, thereby marking out its endowment.

[17] The Anglo-Saxon charter recording the gift shows that the Reculver estate still included land in the west of the Isle of Thanet at that time.

Those numbers can be multiplied four or five times to account for dependants, since they only represent adult male heads of households; Domesday Book does not say where in the manor they lived.

[34] 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.

[37][38] The expansion of the church coincided with a period of growth in the population of Reculver parish as a whole, which had expanded to more than 3,000 people by the late 13th century.

[39] The first record to mention All Saints' explicitly 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.

[40] 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".

[41][Fn 3] In 1310 Archbishop Robert Winchelsey of Canterbury established St Nicholas-at-Wade as a separate parish, with All Saints' Church as its chapel, served by a vicar and an assistant priest.

[51] Archbishop Winchelsey's instructions also set out relative values for the parishes of Reculver and St Nicholas-at-Wade, in allocating dues for taxes known as "clerical tenths".

[37][Fn 9] 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.

This channel had been a preferred route for sea-borne trade between England and continental Europe in medieval times,[59] probably providing "a large part of the early prosperity of Kent",[60] besides supporting a local industry collecting salt, but it was progressively blocked by silt.

[11][71] Fragments of mortar showing the imprint of barnacles were found among the rubble in the foundation trenches, indicating that some of the stone used in the structure had been fetched from the shoreline.

[31] 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.