An idealised 18th Century view of the ruins of
St Martin-le-Grand with the buildings that had
grown up around them removed.
The early Kentish monastery of St Martin
was probably founded within the old Roman
Saxon-Shore Fort at the end of the seventh century.
Destroyed by Viking raids in the late ninth century,
it is thought that the Canons of St Martins moved to
a new church built within the Anglo-Saxon settlement
on Castle Hill above the town. This church later became
the church of St
Mary-in-Castro, but before the Norman Conquest it
was almost certainly the great church built for the
canons of St Martins, whose many estates are mentioned
on the first page of the Domesday Book. At the time
of the Norman Conquest the Castle
started to be built on the hilltop, and the canons had
to find a new home in the town below.
Building commenced around 1070 at a
site on the western side of the present Market
Square. Building work on the church seems to have
stopped at the beginning of the twelfth century when
the nave had only just been started. The canons of St
Martins were subject only to the King and the Pope,
and this was not to the liking of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. In 1130 the King Henry I was finally persuaded
to grant the church and all its estates to the Archbishop
and the monks of Canterbury. The Archbishop originally
planned to complete the church and use it for the new
order, but the monks of Canterbury did not like this
, and in 1139 they managed to persuade him to build
a new house just outside Dover which became St
Martins Priory.
The church, later called St-Martin-le-Grand,
was eventually completed to form a large parish church.
By the late middle ages, this church apparently combined
under one roof three parish churches, St Martin, St
Nicholas and St John-the -Baptist. Within the church
itself there were a whole mass of altars and chapels
which are mentioned in various later fifteenth and early
sixteenth century wills.
By 1536 St Martin-le-Grand was in very
poor condition, and when the Reformation came a few
years later it ceased to be used for its parish churches.
The altars were removed in 1546, and the eastern part
was let by the Corporation for shops and tenements fronting
onto the Market Square.
A passageway ran through the central apse to the enlarged
graveyard in the western part of the church. This graveyard
was still in use until the late nineteenth century,
and large fragments of the eastern arm of the church
were still incorporated into houses at this time. The
area was badly damaged in the Second
World War and subsequent excavations have helped
to determine the plan of the church. Some remains of
the church can be seen just off the Market
Square behind Barclays Bank, and are best viewed
from the Children's Library in the Dover
Discovery Centre.
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