1)2 ARCHITECTURAL STYLES IN FORDINGTON CHURCH. 



It is said, however, that St. Augustine, having his see granted 

 him in the royal City (Canterbury), and being supported by the 

 King, recovered therein a church which he was informed had 

 been built by the ancient Roman Christians, and he consecrated 

 it in the name of " our Holy Saviour, God and Lord Jesus 

 Christ." 



Now after this he must be a bold man who would assert that 

 the foundations still existing in a continuous line under the 

 semi-Norman pillars at St. George's must have supported Saxon 

 work, especially as we have to-day, nearly fourteen hundred years 

 later, Roman masonry work still standing in the town. 



I do not think the Saxons would have pulled down a good 

 Romano- British straight wall and built another straight wall on 

 the same foundations. It is scarcely common sense to suppose 

 they would do it with no object of utility to be attained, and the 

 Romans undoubtedly were more refined and better workmen, 

 with more efficient tools and implements than the Saxons. The 

 most that probably they would have done would have been 

 repairs or some alteration to a door, window, or otherwise. 



One or other of the following deductions may be drawn from 

 this at the Saxon period, viz. : 



1. The possibility of a Romano-British Church remaining 



undemolished. 



2. Demolition at the time of the Diocletian persecution, and 



rebuilding after the persecution ceased. 



3. Left demolished for nearly 400 years (which is not at all 



likely) till Saxon times, and they took it in hand to 

 rebuild it. 



I am of opinion that it was not a Saxon erection which the 

 Normans altered and adapted, but the walls of a Romano- 

 British edifice, either left undemolished or rebuilt after the 

 Diocletian persecution, as I find it hard to believe and suppose 

 that the Normans would so soon pull about, alter, and transform 

 the walls of, to them, a new Saxon erection. 



