ABSTRACT
In 1802 Mr C.C. Nailor, vicar of the parish of Reculver in Kent, embarked on a project that was to blacken his reputation. His ancient parish church, dramatically situated in the centre of the Roman shore-fort of Regulbium on the north Kent coast, was threatened by galloping coastal erosion. Much of the northern part of the fort had tumbled into the sea over the previous two decades, and 1802 saw further crumbling of the cliffs and the collapse of another building, the so-called ‘chapel-house’ just north-east of the church. The vicar had the further problem that the church was by now remote from most of its parishioners, following the drift of the local population from the ravaged village west of the fort to a new centre around the hamlet of Hillborough, over a mile to the south-west. There was therefore much to be said for Mr Nailor’s plan to build a new parish church further inland, in a position more convenient for the congregation and less vulnerable to the elements. But the vicar earned posterity’s condemnation by pushing forward a scheme to demolish the old church, finally winning parish agreement for this in 1805. Demolition of the nave and chancel began immediately and soon only low walls and foundations remained of this part of the building. The twin Norman towers of the west end, then crowned with wooden spires, had long functioned as a seamark and were temporarily spared – although their future seemed uncertain as the cliff crept within five yards of the ruins. Salvation arrived in 1809, when the Trinity Board of Navigation purchased the site to preserve the towers and took steps to arrest further erosion. Some of the stone-work from the church was used for the construction of the new church at Hillborough, but other parts of the fabric were more widely scattered: the two columns separating the nave and chancel were sold to a local landowner and set up in his orchard near Canterbury (they have now been re-erected in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral, reunited with a missing capital found on a Reculver farm).1
