Old Cathedral and Church of St Michael

A means of getting from Maidstone to Newhaven (or vice-versa)

Yea verily, ye olde trunke roade.

He looks a bit old to be hitching a lift

Clyde House photo

Helen, to me it looks as if all the doorways fit as they did when I was a kid, and when it was built, so I can't understand where all the soil movement is that's talked about?

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to Kaga but the soil level and road level have changed somewhat since the earliest version of St Michael's. There's some evidence that the first St Michael's was within the castle wall, bank and ditch. The oldest remaining part is the south porch and that used to have several steps up to it, as did St Mary's Hall. Even counting the modern pavement, Bayley Lane must have been lower originally. On the other side of St Michael's the ground has been substantially altered. First the ditch and bank were made and then back filled. The tower partially sits over the unstable infill, which needed stabilising recently. The graveyard would have had war ditches from the point where the Duke of Marmion used the partially built St Mary's central crossing as a base to attack the castle. Once the wall came down the area would have had centuries of bodies and coffins, leaves, grass. Paths came and went. The old burials were dug up and the bones put in the charnel house - the crypt accessible from the north wall. New burials were made, some with stone coffins. Some of the earliest images of the church yard show many lumps and bumps. The other main door to the cathedral was on the north side and that is now hidden behind a shop but it had quite a few steps up to it. At the west end of the cathedral the area had houses on it. I have very little information about those buildings and they may have only dated back to the Civil War but then again, churches weren't always isolated in their own plot like they tend to be now. Talking of which, there were shops/houses abutting the south east end of the cathedral, opposite Drapers Hall, There is the suggestion that the odd line of the east end is due to existing properties on Bayley Lane defining the southern edge. The lower ground level explains how the windows on the cathedral stood clear of the roofs. The cathedral itself has changed size and shape several times over its life. Two of the most deliberate recent changes were the addition of the door opposite the pump outside St Mary's Hall and the vestry on the southern side of the apse. The best book I've read about St Michael's is St Michael's Coventry: The Rise and Fall of the Old Cathedral This is a very good price as the ones available from Amazon etc are shockingly high.

Thanks Helen, have ordered the book, confused about the talk of the ridges etc. Thanks again.

Helen. Yes I know most of that, but removing thousands or more bodies to the charnel house I would have thought would have lowered the churchyard (storage chapels for bones), often sunken below the church. During the Reformation many charnel houses were destroyed. But the churchyard was often a lot older than the church and often tells more about the people who lived in the area than the church does. I believe there may have been a very old yew tree in the graveyard where the new Cathedral now stands. Yew trees are an indication that the churchyard is ancient, and Christian representation of eternal life, when cut they 'bleed' red sap, suggesting the resurrection of Christ (yews are toxic to humans and animals). Historically the churchyard had different status parts, closer a grave to the altar of the church the higher the status and more blessed the deceased was. The eastern wall and the south-eastern corner were the prime real estate. The northern side of the church more sinister, associated with the darkness and the devil. Graves usually aligned east-west, the feet facing east, the deceased to face the resurrection of Jesus, or maybe the rising sun. I believe that an avenue of trees were planted in between the Cathedral and Trinity in Coventry in the twenties? By far the largest graveyard I ever walked around was Brookwood in Surrey, a great number of WWI soldiers buried there. And maybe the oldest, the tomb of Samson.

As a child in this great Cathedral seated peacefully in a pew, along with others, all watching the colourful light of the stained glass windows creep along the towering pillars as the sun edged across the heavens, everyone shared a sense of wonder, admiring a natural and simplest form of a miracle. A stream of images in my mind, of great ancient and holy places places, of great walls of cities, of armies of men fighting with swords and shields, of great spiritual leaders in countries I had only seen pictures of. Is it no wonder only a few years later that I found myself in reality with these pictures I had heard of and read so much about. In 1946/7 the Holy Land had changed very little from a thousand years before. It was only then, when Exodus happened so many flooded into the country and created today with so much modernisation and languages all rolled into one. The buildings, tourism, and modern motorways have destroyed those images.

This morning the cobblestones glistened from the recent rain, the tram cars rumbled through the streets. I was ten years old as I walked through the churchyard, a spreading yew tree, an avenue of trees between the ancient mighty churches - the walls that hem them in, rise high into the sky, the stone work bleached by the years. Ten years and I was still not sure I had not missed something. Monks thought the yew tree could drive away devils, they sucked nourishment and poison from the graveyard. I climb the well worn, twisting steps to the battlements - it's darker than I thought it would be, rawer and older. I arrive breathless on the ramparts, I feel victorious. A view of the city. I walk gape-jawed around the battlements, all around a thousand rooftops swirl before me, some of medieval houses. District after district, I count the chimneys, try to identify them. Back outside the old walls looked washed. The sun comes out, sending a needle-tipped shadow across the cemetery.I walk back into Broadgate, and the city crowds in. Too many items in my pockets, too many thoughts swirling in my brain. The first ten years of my life were Victorian pace - my father, grandfather and people around me had that environment, the slow walk of the horse, the pace of a thousand years or more. Only ten years before I was born, England had used and lost some 80-90,000 horses in war, like generations throughout the ages. Never again would the horse control peoples lives. Never again would people know that enviroment of my first years. My next ten years leaped far ahead than any previous years in history, engines, electronics, medicine, flight - all advanced beyond anything my grandfathers could have imagined.

St Michael's in 1925 prior to the removal of pews. Shows how light and airy the soaring architecture of its columns impress.

John Thornton of Coventry invented Angry Birds.

Helen - I suspect you're having a lend of us, but is it really true? There are no references to John Thornton in Wiki's "Angry Birds" page.