Canterbury, Kent - St Dunstan

Ever since the eldest started uni at Canterbury I've been meaning to visit St Dunstan to record the Roper memorials - William Roper (1495-1577) was my children's 13th great uncle and married Margaret More (1505-1564), daughter of St Thomas More, and recovered his head - Thomas's not Williams's - from the pole outside the Tower of London which was subsequently interred in the Roper vault in St Dunstan.

After accidentally visiting the city cemetery, misled by the imposing tower I spotted, I found the correct church and was decidedly underwhelmed. It has a very spruce feel to it and is very 'restored'. At least I have recorded the Roper chapel and there was some OK late period glass but mostly this was a disappointment.

ST DUNSTAN, St Dunstan’s Street. A suburban church, well placed on rising ground above the road. The earliest part is the N wall, of coursed flints, laid herringbone-wise in the lower part. No feature, except maybe the unusually large stones of the NW quoin, to corroborate that this is the N side of an aisleless Early Norman church, just a lancet and a Dec two-lighter, both renewed. The lancets flanking the Perp W doorway cannot be C13. N porch; W of it, in an unusual position, a bijou Dec chapel, built in 1330, with its own gabled roof, E window blocked by the porch, and a PISCINA. See the N doorway, with a sunk chamfer and a sunk quadrant moulding, and the little square-headed window that breaks up into the bold string-course. S aisle, and at its W end a Perp tower, very thin for its height, with angle buttresses and a low, round stair-turret. Ground storey vaulted inside. It may be however that the tower is coeval with the S aisle, though the aisle has windows purely Dec in form, like that on the N side, with a big octofoil at the head with ogee lobes, alternately large and small. The arcade that goes with them is Perp in style, the piers shafted to E and W, with continuous mouldings in the other directions, making the pier-plan a sort of lozenge. The terminus ante quem for the aisle is 1402, the date of licensing the Roper Chapel, S of the chancel, which has a W arch aligned on the axis of the aisle. Only the W arch of the chapel and the two-bay arcade, with a plain octagonal pier and respond, go back to the C15, for c.1524 the outer walls were rebuilt in red brick, with wide, depressed-headed windows with cuspless arched lights, i.e. in latest, simplest Perp style. - FONT COVER. Perp. Tall, graceful, and charmingly intricate, though new at the bottom. - PLATE. Paten,1639 by T. C.(?); Paten, 1720; two Cups, 1774 by Frederic Deveer( P). - MONUMENTS. John Roper d. 1524. Bethersden marble tomb-chest, with a back plate for brasses, now lost. Little decoration. - Edmund Roper d. 1533. Like the last, but a bit larger, and with a somewhat richer array of lozenges of tracery on the front of the chest.* - Thomas Rooper d. 1597. Columned double tablet. As much hack-work as the others.

* In the vault below the chapel, the head of Sir Thomas More is said to be kept. One of his daughters married a Roper.

Mee barely mentions it merely saying 'St Dunstan's, which has the Roper Chapel, and the head of Sir Thomas More in a casket, can also boast a 13th century chest, a 14th century font cover, windows glowing in blue and gold, and a 16th century altar table'. I suppose the wealth of stunningness in the city does somewhat overwhelm this building.

Flickr.