Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/307

visitor occasionally finds in out-of-the-way places primitive forms of dials, such as were used in Saxon, Norman, Early English, and mediæval times, and which, naturally enough, have a special charm of their own. A good hunting-ground for them, it seems to me, is on the south walls or doorways of our Norman and Early English churches, especially those which have escaped so-called "restoration."

There is one at Lyminge, on the south wall of the venerable church well worthy of notice. The church itself, Bevan quotes as being once of the three most interesting in Kent, as well as one of the most ancient in the country. It has distinct traces of Roman and Anglo-Saxon masonry, the fact being that a Roman basilica first of all existed there, then a Saxon church was built on its site, and later another church, which was added to by different Archbishops—Wareham, Cardinal Morton, and others.

Of the basilica, the foundations and portions of the apse were brought to light by the efforts of the well-known enthusiast in things antiquartan, Canon Jenkins (who is rector and vicar of Lyminge); he himself telling me many interesting facts pertaining to the dial. It is cut rudely, but to a considerable depth, on a stone which undoubtedly originally formed part of a Roman villa (Villa Maxima de Lyminge), and is now built as one of the corner stones into the south wall of the nave, which wall was St. Dunstan's work (about 965 A.D.). Its position is about 5ft. 4in. above the present ground level, and about 14ft. to the right of an inscription pointing out the burial-place of St Ethelburga, the Queen (633—647 A.D.), daughter of King Ethelbert and wife of Edwin of Northumbria.

At Mersham—a little village between Smeeth and Ashford—there are to be seen