Reculvers, Kent - nice early undivided back postcard c.1901

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Reculver, Kent - The Reculvers - shows the remains of the church - early univided back postcard (these were the norm before the rules changed on writing the message on the address side in 1902)
• Publisher:  none given
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

------------------------------------------------

Postage & Packing:

Postage and packing charge should be showing for your location (contact if not sure).

No additional charges for more than one postcard. You can buy as many postcards from me as you like and you will just pay the fee above once. Please wait for combined invoice. (If buying postcards with other things such as books, please contact or wait for invoice before paying).

Payment Methods:

UK - PayPal, Cheque (from UK bank) or postal order

Outside UK: PayPal ONLY (unless otherwise stated) please.   NO non-UK currency checks or money orders (sorry).

NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

----------------------------------------------

Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

*************

Reculver is a village and coastal resort about 3 miles (5 km) east of Herne Bay in south-east England, in a ward of the same name, in the City of Canterbury district of Kent. It once occupied a strategic location at the north-western end of the Wantsum Channel, a sea lane that separated the Isle of Thanet and the Kent mainland until the late Middle Ages. This led the Romans to build a small fort there at the time of their conquest of Britain in 43 AD, and, starting late in the 2nd century, they built a larger fort, or castrum, called Regulbium, which later became one of the chain of Saxon Shore forts. The military connection resumed in the Second World War, when the sea off Reculver was used for testing Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs.

By the 7th century Reculver had become a landed estate of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Kent. The site of the Roman fort was given over for the establishment of a monastery dedicated to St Mary in 669 AD, and King Eadberht II of Kent was buried there in the 760s. During the Middle Ages Reculver was a thriving township with a weekly market and a yearly fair, and it was a member of the Cinque Port of Sandwich. The settlement declined as the Wantsum Channel silted up, and coastal erosion claimed many buildings constructed on the soft sandy cliffs. The village was largely abandoned in the late 18th century, and most of the church was demolished in the early 19th century. Protecting the ruins and the rest of Reculver from erosion is an ongoing challenge.

The 20th century saw a revival as local tourism developed and there are now three caravan parks. The census of 2001 recorded 135 people in the Reculver area, nearly a quarter of whom were in caravans at the time. Reculver Country Park is a Special Protection Area, Site of Special Scientific Interest and Ramsar site, which has rare clifftop meadows and is important for migrating birds.

The earliest recorded form of the name, Regulbium, is Celtic in origin, meaning ""at the promontory"", or ""great headland"", and, in Old English, this became corrupted to Raculf, sometimes given as Raculfceastre, giving rise to the modern ""Reculver"".^{[3][Fn 1]} The form ""Raculfceastre"" includes the Old English place-name element ""ceaster"", which frequently relates to ""a [Roman] city or walled town"".^[5]

Mary's Church, Reculver, was founded as a monastery in the 7th century on the site of a Roman fort at Reculver, which was then at the north-eastern extremity of Kent in south-eastern England. In 669, the site of the fort was given for this purpose to a priest named Bassa by King Ecgberht of Kent, beginning a connection with Kentish kings which led to the monastery becoming very wealthy by the end of the 8th century, during which King Eadberht II of Kent was buried there. From the early 9th century the monastery was in the hands of the archbishops of Canterbury, who treated it essentially as a piece of property. Viking attacks may have ended its status as a monastery, although an early 11th-century record indicates that it was then in the hands of a dean accompanied by monks. By the time of Domesday Book, completed in 1086, the building served as a parish church.

The original building, which incorporated materials from the Roman fort, was a simple one consisting only of a nave and an apsidal chancel, with a small room, or porticus, built out from each of the church's northern and southern sides where the nave and chancel met. The church was much altered and expanded over the course of the Middle Ages, the last addition, in the 15th century, being north and south porches leading into the nave. This expansion coincided with a long period of prosperity for the settlement of Reculver, but the settlement's decline led to the decay and, in the face of coastal erosion, the demolition of most of the church in 1809.

The church's twin towers were preserved by the intervention of Trinity House, since they had long been important as a landmark for shipping. Some materials from the structure were incorporated into a replacement church, also dedicated to St Mary, built at Hillborough in the same parish. Much of the rest was used for the building of a new harbour wall at Margate, known as Margate Pier. Other remnants of the church apart from those on the site include fragments of a high cross of stone which stood inside the church and two stone columns which formed part of an arch between the nave and chancel of the original church, and were still in place when the church was demolished. These are now kept in Canterbury Cathedral, and are among features which have led to the description of the church as an exemplar of Anglo-Saxon church architecture and sculpture.

The first church at Reculver was founded in 669, when King Ecgberht of Kent gave land at Reculver to Bassa the priest on which to build a minster.^[1] The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ""clearly considered [the foundation of this church] to be a significant event"",^[2] and it may be that King Ecgberht's intention in founding a church at Reculver was to create an ecclesiastical centre with a strong English element, to counterbalance domination of the Canterbury church by Archbishop Theodore, from Tarsus, now in Turkey, Abbot Hadrian of St Augustine's, from North Africa, probably Cyrenaica, and their equally ""non-native followers.""^{[3][Fn 1]} The church was certainly regarded as a monastery by 679, when King Hlothhere of Kent granted land to its abbot, Berhtwald.^[8]

The foundation of this church, sited within the remains of the Roman fort of Regulbium, exemplifies the ""widespread practice [in Anglo-Saxon England] of re-using Roman walled places for major churches"",^[9] and the new church was built ""almost completely from demolished Roman structures"".^[10] The original structure formed a nave measuring 37.5 feet (11.4 m) by 24 feet (7.3 m) and an apsidal chancel, which was externally polygonal but internally round, and was entered from the nave through a triple arch formed by two columns made of limestone from Marquise, in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.^[11] The arches were formed using Roman tiles, but the columns were made for the church rather than being Roman in origin.^{[12][Fn 2]} Around the inside of the apse was a stone bench, and two small rooms, or porticus, forming rudimentary transepts were built out from the north and south sides of the church where the nave met the chancel, from which they could be accessed.^{[15][Fn 3]} The presence of a stone bench around the inside of the apse has been attributed to influence from the Syrian Church, at a time when its followers were being displaced.^[17] The walls of the church were rendered both inside and out, giving them a plain appearance and hiding the masonry.^[18]

Ten years after the foundation of the church, in 679, King Hlothhere of Kent granted lands at Sturry, about 6.2 miles (10 km) south-west of Reculver, and at Sarre, in the western part of the Isle of Thanet, across the Wantsum Channel to the east, to Abbot Berhtwald and to the monastery.^{[19][Fn 4]} The grant was made at Reculver, the charter in which it was recorded was probably written by a Reculver scribe, and the grant of Sarre in particular is significant:

type=printed

city/ region=reculvers

period=post-war (1945-present)

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=standard (140x89 mm)