The topless towers of Reculver

Back to Kent and Reculver, the ruined church built within the footprint of a Roman fort. It is ruined because, even though it dated from Saxon times, the parish voted in 1808 to pull it down to build a new church inland.

The towers were kept up as a landmark to shipping and in this aerial photograph from 1920 they are still capped in a rather persnickety style.

Those caps had gone by 1931 and you can see a photo of the towers I took in 2015 below.

Herne Bay and Reculver in 1969

As the blurb on the British Film Institute website says:

John Clague's amazing film starts with the construction of new sea defences using heavy machinery. After a colourful hospital fete we see Archbishop Michael Ramsey in Reculver, presiding at an outdoor religious ceremony. 

Then we see repair work being carried out on the town’s pier before fire breaks out in the Grand Pavilion, reducing it to cinders. After artists exhibit their works on the sea front we see the pier before and after the fire with rainbows over the water.

Six of the Best 804

The death of local democracy is the national calamity we don’t hear about, says John Harris.

Jurgen Habermas, the eminent German sociologist and philosopher, discusses the future of Europe: "Today, national populations are overwhelmed by the politically uncontrollable functional imperatives of a global capitalism that is being driven by unregulated financial markets. The frightened retreat behind national borders cannot be the correct response to that challenge."

"My first London Pride, meant to be an inclusive event, was being hijacked by people telling me I shouldn’t be there. I chair one of the main LGBT charities, and I was being made unwelcome, as were other trans people, by a handful of people who were apparently getting special treatment from the organisers." Helen Belcher on last Saturday's event.

"Most of the one million visitors who visit Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain every year believe they are looking at untouched 4,000-year-old remains. But virtually every stone was re-erected, straightened or embedded in concrete between 1901 and 1964, says a British doctoral student." Emma Young reports on a controversy in archaeology.

Chris Schurke goes on a hunt for a graveyard of military aircraft.

Clerk of Oxford has a tale of St Thomas Beckett and a lost village.

More photographs of Reculver

While I was in Kent I posted a photograph of Reculver taken from most of the way along the coast to Herne Bay.

Here are some photographs from closer to the ruined church. There is something about the site that makes you keep snapping.

There was once a Roman fort here. Later churches were built within its footprint. The current ruin was demolished at the start of the 19th century. In its pomp, with caps on both its towers, it must have resembled Southwell Minster.

Incidentally, the empty cliffs in the photo in my first Reculver post were occupied by a caravan site in the 1950s, as a British Pathe film shows.

Reculver

Reculver is on the North Kent coast. It was once an important Roman fort: later a church was built within the fort.

At the start of the 19th century, as coastal erosion threatened, the church was largel demolished. The two towers were kept as a landmark for shipping. In their prime they raised roofs and must have resembled Southwell Minster by the sea.

I was at Reculver today and could not stop photographing it.