Augustine's arrival. Even if it were possible to state that parts of
the walls were Roman, it would not be an easy matter to say whether
the building were older than the two early Christian churches of
North Cornwall, preserved through the ages by the drifting sand of
that exposed coastline; therefore, to write, as so many have done,
that St. Martin's is the oldest Christian church in England, is not
justified by the facts. Besides St. Martin's, William Thorne, a
fourteenth century chronicler, makes mention of "a temple or
idol-place where Ethelbert had been wont to pray and to sacrifice to
demons," and this building, instead of being destroyed, was purged
from its defilements and idols and hallowed by Augustine when he
dedicated it to St. Pancras the Roman boy-martyr. When the site, about
halfway between St. Martin's and St. Augustine's, was excavated in
1901, it was found to possess a nave about 47 feet long by 26 feet
wide, with an apsidal chancel nearly the same width and depth
separated from the nave by four Roman columns, and Mr. W.H. St. John
Hope, of the Society of Antiquaries, who carried out the operations
with Canon Routledge, has suggested that this may be the first church
built by Augustine out of Roman materials ready to hand, while the
larger one, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, a little to the west,
was slowly being constructed. It was not finished when, in 605,
Augustine died, and eventually the dedication included the canonized
first archbishop of the English Church, who was buried in the building
when it was finished. The other great figures of the period--Ethelbert
and his Queen, and her chaplain--were also laid to rest in the church.
A few years ago it was only possible to form an idea of this large
structure from the Norman north wall of the nave and part of the
north-west tower, but now that nearly the whole of the eastern end has
been excavated one can see the underground portion of practically all
the east end and part of the north transept. Ethelbert's son, Eadbald,