Minster-in-Thanet
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The name comes from the Latin monasterium and denotes the site of an abbey, abbey church, monastery or similar. The first abbey in the village was founded by St. Domneva, a widowed noblewoman, whose daughter St. Mildred, is taken as the first Abbess. The tradition is that Domneva was granted as much land as a hind could run over in a day, the hind remains the village emblem, see also Thanet. The abbey was extinguished by Viking raiding.
The parish church of St. Mary-the-Virgin is largely Norman but with significant traces of ealier work, the problems of which are unresolved. The nave is impressive with five bays and the crossing has an ancient chalk block vaulting. The chancel is Early English with later flying buttresses intended to the very obvious spread of the upper walls. There is a fine set of Misericords reliably dated around 1400. The tower has a curious turret at its southeast corner that is locally referred to as a Saxon watch tower but is built at least partly from Caen stone; it may be that it may be dated from the time of the conquest but in an antique style sometimes called Saxo-Norman. A doorway in the turret opens out some two metres above the present roof line. The two towers are independent structures as can be seen when the bells are rung, the two buildings move against each other.
The church was used by both the brethren of the second abbey, a dependency of St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury and as a parish church. Socket holes in the piers of the crossing suggest that, as well as a rood screen, there was a further screen dividing nave and crossing, such as still exists at Dunster in Somerset. This abbey surrendered during the dissolution in 1534.
Minster Abbey is a house incorporating remains of the Saxon abbey and alleged to be the oldest continuously inhabited house in England. It now houses the villages third religious community, a Priory of Roman Catholic Benedictine sisters that is a daughter community of Eichstadt in Bavaria. It was settled in 1937 by refugee sisters fleeing Nazi Germany and continues to flourish as international community with sisters from seven nations. The Priory has the care of a relic of St. Mildred that had been in the care of a church in Deventer in the Netherlands since the Reformation.
Famous people
St. Augustine is said by the St. Bede the Venerable to have landed with 40 men at Ebbsfleet, within the parish Of Minster before beginning his mission in Canterbury.Richard Culmer, the infamous Puritan minister known locally as Blue Dick Culmer, was presented to the living but the people rejected him and his name - to this day - is still omitted from the role of incumbents in the church porch.
Famous people to have been born there include the composer Nigel Horne.
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