irregular intervals,
varying from nine to twenty inches apart, the spaces being filled with
Kentish rag-stone and occasional blocks of chalk. The chancel extends
eighteen or twenty feet east of the arch and is composed of Roman
bricks, evenly laid and averaging four bricks to a foot.

[Illustration: An Ancient Window built with Roman Brickwork.
Swanscombe, Kent. _Photograph Mr. G. H. Smith._]

The chancel was lengthened at the beginning of the thirteenth century
and again at a more recent date, so that its architecture to-day is
of three distinct periods. Outside may be seen five flat pilaster
buttresses and one semi-circular one, a square-headed Roman doorway, a
Saxon doorway and two Early English porches; and there is also a nearly
circular panel on the south side of the nave, and a Norman squint at the
west end. There are many other features of interest which bear evidences
of a great antiquity, and the only question which is seriously disputed
is whether the earliest portion of the present nave was built about the
end of the Roman occupation of Britain or during the mission of S.
Augustine. The Rev. Charles F. Routledge, M.A., F.S.A., Hon. Canon of
Canterbury Cathedral, writes: "Whatever may finally be determined to be
the date of the church's foundation, it can never lose its unique
association with S. Augustine, King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha, nor its
undisputed claim to be the oldest existing church in England. From it
flowed the tiny spring of English Christianity, which has since widened
out into a mighty river, and penetrated the remotest parts of the
civilized and uncivilized world."

[Side note: Other Early Churches.]

Among other churches which show signs of having been built during the
Roman occupation are those of Reculver, Richborough and Lyminge, while
the foundations of an undoubted early church have been discovered in
the old Roman city of Silchester, in Hampshire. _See frontispiece._ The
old church at Reculver stood originally within the Roman castrum, the
fortress which guarded the northern mouth of the Wantsume, now a small
stream, but once an arm of the sea dividing the Isle of Thanet from the
mainland. The greater part of this church was pulled down in 1809, but
the western towers, known as "the sisters" were repaired by Trinity
House, as they constitute a useful landmark for mariners, being visible
at a great distance.

Reculver church was built about A.D. 670, and from the existing wal