10:05 Professor Ken Dark

Although today dominated by the impressive ruins of the later medieval abbey, St. Augustine’s Abbey – part of the Canterbury UNESCO Word Heritage site – was the base for the late sixth-century Papal mission to Kent, sent by Gregory the Great, which led ultimately to the establishment the English Church. The Mission was pivotal in the later development of English religious and political life, culture and even architecture, but most of what is published about the earliest phases of St. Augustine’s derives from early 20th-century excavations, and little attention has been paid to what was at the site prior to the arrival of the missionaries in 597. Established in 2019, the ‘Mission to England’ project seeks to employ 21st-century archaeological methods to enhance understanding of the origins and earliest development of the St. Augustine’s site. The first part of the project’s work, at the Chapel of St. Pancras, has already identified what may well be the earliest known ‘Anglo-Saxon’ church built in Britain – and the only one which may have been commissioned, consecrated and used by the leader of the Papal mission, St. Augustine of Canterbury.