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Saint Martin of Tours – Guston Parish Church
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News from Guston |
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(To read about the church in French, please go to: pour lire l’histoire de l’église, merci de
suivre ce lien:
http://www.saintmartindetours.eu/patrimoine/royaume-uni/kent/ The Church is dedicated
to St Martin of Tours, one of the Patron saints of France, preceding St Joan
of Arc by many centuries. He was probably born in 316 AD, in what is now
Hungary, then part of the Roman Empire.
He was the son of a Roman Army Officer and followed his father into
the Army when he was old enough to do so.
However, at the age of 20, his life was dramatically changed when, on
seeing a beggar freezing in the cold, he cut his Army cloak in two and shared
it with the poor man. That night, in
a dream, Martin saw Christ as the beggar whom he had helped. Martin converted to Christianity and
refused to continue in the Army, although, in order to rebut the charge of
cowardice, he offered to stand alone and unarmed between the Roman and enemy
lines. Perhaps fortunately, he was
not put to the test and so lived to continue his new work preaching, first in
Italy and then in Gaul, modern day France, and devoting his life to Christ as
a hermit. He was eventually given
land for a hermitage at Ligugé near Tours, and he was elected Bishop of Tours
in 372 AD. He continued to live in a
monastic cell near his cathedral, and later at nearby Marmoutier, until his
death in 397 AD. Such was the
respect in which he was held that his shrine at Tours soon became a major
centre of pilgrimage and many towns and villages in France to this day bear
his name, taken from the dedication of their local church. From his generosity in sharing his cloak,
he has been taken as the patron saint of innkeepers, so that for Guston, it
is perhaps appropriate that we hold our Harvest Supper in the Chance Inn! St Martin is also, not surprisingly in view of his early career,
held to be the patron saint of soldiers, and his festival day is the 11th
November, which is also Remembrance Day.
The Frankish Kings preserved his cloak (in Latin - Cappella) as a
sacred relic that was carried before them into battle. The cloak was kept in a sanctuary in the
care of cappellani, or chaplains, and the word chapel came to be extended
to any building being used for worship, which was not a church - again a link
to our church in Guston, when it was a chapel for the Archbishops of
Canterbury. The current church
building, built in around 1090, is listed by English Heritage as Grade II*,
one of only 6 per cent of the most architecturally significant buildings in
the country. As we see it today, it
has probably changed relatively little since Norman times, as the ‘crusader
crosses’ incised on the door way indicate.
These crosses were carved into the stonework of churches by knights
giving thanks for their return from a crusade, and to blunt their swords to
symbolise their adoption of a new, peaceful, life. The roof line may have been altered somewhat in the 17th
Century, when the false ceiling over the Nave may have been put in; the last
repairs, in 1997, and which cost £35,000, saw the replacement of some of the
coping stones which were the original Caen stone. Hasted’s description of the church, published in 1800,
describes the church as having no tower or steeple, but a drawing in 1807
shows it as present; this addition probably necessitated the construction of
the buttress against the end wall of the nave, which contains the original
Norman windows, although these have been filled in, perhaps at the same
time. In the Victorian period the
interior of the church was re-ordered - the arch that screened the chancel
was removed, leaving only vestigial traces of the arch, and the pews, wooden
rood screen and reredos added. The
stained glass windows in the chancel date from that time; the lower two show
St Martin as Archbishop and Soldier, and were made by the firm of Worral
& Co, costing £11 in 1887.
Worral’s, formerly Saunders & Co, made the windows for many other
churches including Cork Cathedral and Studley Royal. The Doomsday Book, William of Normandy's record of the England
which he had recently conquered, refers to Guston as Gocistone, part of the
possessions of the Canons of St Martin, and in view of its proximity to the
Roman Road from Dover to Richborough, it is not surprising that the
settlement here would have been well developed by Saxon times. The Church may
have Saxon origins, but the present building dates from about 1097,
contemporary with the Norman development of Dover Castle. The full entry of 1086 reads thus: “Lands of the Canons of St Martin of Dover. In Guston Wulfric holds 1 yoke (of
oxen) and there he has a villan (higher status peasant) and 1 bordar (lower status peasant)
with 1 plough (unit of ploughland) . To this land belong 25 acres of
land in Cornillo Hundred (near Eastry) and there are 5 bordars with
half a plough. All together it is worth 20 s (shillings)
: TRE 10s. (Tempore Regis Edwardi; i.e. pre-Conquest). Alric held it as a prebend. (income
to support one of the canons of St Martin, Dover).” After the
Norman conquest, Guston belonged to the Augustinian Canons of St Martin,
Dover, but about the time of King Henry I, ownership was passed to the
Benedictine’s who took over St Martin’s as a Priory, a dependency of St
Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury. There
is an Act of Archbishop Stephen Langton dated July 1227 that confirms this
ownership, and about 1377 a record for Richard II reports ‘the abbot’s land
at Gonstone was 109 acres of pasture’.
The chancel of the chapel in the manor would have enabled those monks
working locally to maintain their round of daily services and in addition,
the nave would have provided the local inhabitants with a parish church. A tax return for the Papal dues of 1291
shows the value of the church as £10 and the vicarage as £3/6/8d. (For information on Dover Priory click here
) Prior to Henry VIII's dissolution of the Monasteries, his Chancellor
Cromwell’s report on the state and condition of the monasteries, the Valor
Ecclesiasticus, reported that the Manor and Spiritualities of Guston were
still owned by St Martin’s Priory, and this was eventually surrendered to the
Crown in 1535. On 31st
July 1538, the King passed (sold?) ownership to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Thomas Cranmer, who was later to become one of the first martyrs of the
Anglican Church when he was burnt at the stake by Henry's successor, Mary.
From that time, though, the church was classed as a Chapel, with the
Archbishop of Canterbury having the right of nominating a "perpetual
curate" with a stipend of £4 and to this day, the Patrons of the church
with the right to nominate the parish priest are the Archbishop and the Dean
of Canterbury Cathedral. The present
Archbishop kindly agreed to join us for our St Martin’s Day service in 2005,
probably the first time any Archbishop has visited the parish, and in 2006
the Dean, Dr Robert Willis, paid us a similar complement.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most
Rev’d Rowan Williams with Rev’d David Ridley An similarly historic event occurred at
the 2008 Patronal Festival, when Fr Abbott Lawrence O’Keefe OSB, the Abbott
Emeritus of St Augustine’s Abbey, Ramsgate, joined us; this is probably the
first time a Catholic Benedictine Abbott would have set foot in the church
since the Reformation.
Father Abbott Lawrence O’Keefe OSB with
Rev’d Stewart Carolan-Evans In the following year,
2009, the Patronal Festival was less than a month after Pope Benedict XVI had
made his historic response to members of the Anglican Communion, Anglicanorum
Coetibus, which
alters the Catholic Church’s Constitution to allow for a historic reunion,
over 450 years after the Reformation split.
By a happy coincidence, our guest preacher was Br. Philippe Yates, of
the Order of Friars Minor, and Principal of the Franciscan International
Study Centre, shown here with Revd David Ridley and Revd Stewart
Carolan-Evans.
This papal initiative
links neatly with Guston, too, in another way: in 2007, our distinguished
guest at our Patronal Festival was Keith Newton, then Bishop of Richborough,
the Provincial Episcopal Visitor to parishes which had not accepted the
ordained ministry of women in the Church of England. On 15th January 2011, Fr Keith
was ordained into the Catholic Church and appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as
the first Ordinary to lead the new Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans. However, going back to
the 16th Century, the effects of the Protestant Reformation may
not have been all to the good in Guston.
During the brief period of the return of the Catholic faith during
Mary’s reign, the record of the Visitation by Archdeacon Nicholas Harpesfield
on the morning of Monday 16th August 1557 reports a state of sad
neglect. There was no vicar or
vicar’s house, the curacy was vacant, and ‘Master Craford had the parsonage
in farm and receiveth great gain’’, which probably means that the income from
the land endowed to the church to maintain the curate had been taken over by
this Mr Craford and diverted to his own enrichment. The church also showed signs of neglect. The Archdeacon required repairs to ‘the
chancel of tile and glass by All Hallows, with timber work.’ There was no mass book, nor altar even, and the font needed a
lock and key for its cover, all no doubt sold off during the latter stages of
Protestant reform under Mary’s brother, Edward VI. The Archdeacon also instructed that ‘a veil and covering cloth for
the rood be provided before Lent’ and that the new altar should have ‘an
altar frontal and curtains before Christmas’. The reference to curtains suggests that this is to revive the
old pre-Reformation canon law that by the altar should be, suitably curtained,
statues of the Virgin Mary and the Patron saint, in this case St Martin. One other entry in this Visitation gives us a glimpse of what the
church might have looked like in pre-Reformation days. The parish is to ‘provide a framework of
candles for the sepulchre’ and ‘provide a streamer for when it be
occupied’. The sepulchre was used in
the liturgy of Holy Week, when Christ was symbolically entombed in the form
of the Sacred Host that had been consecrated on Maundy Thursday. The streamer would then be placed outside
the tomb until Easter day, when the liturgical drama ‘Quem Qæritis?’
(‘Whom seekest thou?’) was enacted, to convey the importance of Christ’s
resurrection. The sepulchre was one
of the many examples of medieval piety that were largely swept away in the
Reformation, but elaborate examples remain in Hawton (Notts) and Heckington
(Lincs). One example of a sepulchre
that gives us a possible clue to the use of the recess on the south wall of
the chancel is that in St Giles, Cheadle (Staffs). This church was the reconstruction by the architect Pugin of
his ideal of a medieval church, and the form of the sepulchre there does have
echoes of this recess, which like Pugin’s, may have been similarly decorated
with a painting of the resurrection.
We can also grasp from this a little of the facility with which the
Medieval mind, in a way that is almost lost to us today, could penetrate the
veil between this world and the next.
Through Christ they knew themselves to be united with the Church in
Heaven, where he was enthroned in glory, and at the same time present in the
Host in their sepulchre, thanks to what the Prayer Book still calls even now ‘these
holy mysteries’. No numbers for communicants were given in the 1557 Visitation,
which, in view of the lack of mass book and altar is perhaps not surprising,
but by 1588, there were said to be 38 communicants, and since religious
practice was almost universal, that gives us some idea of the number of
adults in the village. Guston was, however,
as a Parish exempt from Archdeacon’s Visitations once Mary’s return to the
earlier ways had been ended, following her succession by her sister,
Elizabeth I; hence further such
reports are lacking. There was a
Commissary’s Visitation of Exempt Parishes on 25th November 1561,
seeking to determine if the protestant reforms had been re-instituted, and we
read that Guston certified that the parish had complied with the Commissary’s
requirements. These requirements
focused on finding out if churches had pulled down the rood loft and if the
newly required parish reading had been provided, in this case probably
homilies by Calvin; however it is not clear whether Guston had complied with
both, or, in view of the small size of the church and since it might well not
have had room for a rood loft, the gallery by the crucifix over the entry to
the chancel, it was simply a question of having bought the homilies. At the
Restoration of Charles II in the mid-17th Century, which brought the 1662
Prayer Book that is still in use today, there were 39 communicants and the
stipend had risen to £10: by way of comparison, as we start the 21st Century,
the Church has 14 on its electoral roll of communicants, and the Quota, which
is the Parish share of stipend, and other Diocesan costs, is £1,600 per
annum. Perhaps the outstanding features however, are
the main doorway and also the original Norman windows in the Chancel behind
the altar, which are of particular note.
In the Middle Ages, the Church would have been decorated by wall
paintings, now obscured by the cement rendering but probably first vandalised
during the Protestant zeal of the Reformation. At the same time the statues to Our Lady and St Martin in the
chancel and St Nicholas and St Roke, probably in the nave, each with their
votive candles and recorded in the 1531 Will of Edward Prescott, would also
have been stripped from the Church.
In the south wall of the Chancel is an alcove, which might have been
the sepulchre and perhaps earlier a door to the chancel for use by the priest
and monks when the nave was used by the laity as the parish church. St Roke,
or Roch, is a French Saint who, during the Middle Ages, developed a following
as a result of his care for those ill from the plague. When he fell ill himself, he isolated
himself in a forest, where a dog found him and brought him food each day from
its master's table. Statues of St
Roch, always with his faithful dog, can still be found in many French
churches. In the churchyard you
will find many old headstones, some dating back 300 years; a more recent
Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone and also the area dedicated for
the use of Duke of York's Royal Military School This School is within the parish boundaries that stretch down
to the Eastern Docks, which makes Guston one of the closest English parishes
to France. Guston Church of England
Primary School, until recently in the buildings in the Street which now serve
as a Village Hall, has new premises in the area of the former Connaught
Barracks, since military families then made up many of its pupils. As then, so now, it still offers good
primary education to the children of the Parish, as it has done since formal
schooling first started in Guston early in the 20th Century. You will find photographs
and a plan of the building elsewhere
on the web site Thanks are due to the staff of Canterbury Cathedral Archives, who
hold such past parish records as are
available, together with Diocesan records: http://www.canterbury-cathedral.org And the Franciscan
International Study Centre library for other details of the pre-Reformation
parish and during the time of Queen Mary: |
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