In August archaeologists excavating on the south side of St Mary and St Ethelburga’s Church in Lyminge, Kent, uncovered the stone apse (pictured) of an early Anglo-Saxon church paralleling the sanctuary of the later parish church. The clue that an older building might lie beneath the medieval church was already hiding in plain sight, in the church’s dedication to an Anglo-Saxon saint.

St Ethelburga was the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent and his Merovingian queen, Bertha – the rulers of Kent who first asked Pope Gregory to send teachers of the Christian faith to the English people. The arrival of St Augustine and his companions at Ebbsfleet in 597 began to fulfil Gregory’s prophecy that the Angles, once converted to Christianity, would be little short of angels.