Ebbsfleet, Thanet

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In 1884 Ebbsfleet in Thanet was selected[1] as the place in the Isle of Thanet where St. Augustine landed in 597, to convert the Kingdom of Kent to Christianity; a standing stone cross to commemorate St. Augustine's landing was erected near the local St. Augustine's Golf Club and just next to the nearby village of Cliffsend.[2] The location of his landing would have been then on the Ebbsfleet peninsula, a spit of land jutting into the former Wantsum Channel. There are prehistoric, Iron Age, Roman and Saxon settlement remains on the peninsula around Ebbsfleet Farm, which may have also been the landing stage for the Roman ferry across the channel to Richborough from Thanet. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it is also the site of the landings made by the Saxons in the fifth century AD; an entry states that Hengist and Horsa, on the invitation of Vortigern, King of the Britons, landed in 449 at Ypwines fleot, usually assumed to be Ebbsfleet. This landing place is no longer suitable as a landing place due to silting of the surrounding coastline in the intervening centuries.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bede wrote in his History simply "Over against the eastern districts of Kent there is a large island called Thanet which, in English reckoning, is 600 hides "or families" in extent. It is divided from the mainland by the river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs wide, can be crossed in two places only, and joins the sea at either end. Here Augustine, the servant of the Lord, landed with his companions, who are said to have been nearly forty in number. They had acquired interpreters from the Frankish race according to the command of Pope St Gregory."
  2. ^ Date and text of the inscription.
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