Herne, Kent

Archaeological excavations inside St Martin's Church at Herne in 1976, indicated that the first church there was similar to the earliest, Anglo-Saxon examples in Kent, such as those at Rochester, Canterbury, Reculver and Lyminge, and consisted of only a nave and an apsidal chancel. The historian Nicholas Brooks noted that the Domesday Monachorum of 1087 or soon after lists Herne as the location of a minster, which is recorded nowhere else. Brooks speculated that this referred to the church excavated in 1976, and that it may have been founded in the 7th or 8th century, but perhaps as late as the 11th century. However, he regarded it as "perhaps most likely that the foundation of a [minster]…