Eadbald of Kent (616-640) is said to have built a nunnery, dedicated to St. Peter, for his daughter Eanswith at Folkestone, and this is mentioned in a charter of 927, in which Folkestone is described as a place where there was formerly an abbey of nuns which had been destroyed by the Danes. In the Life of St Eanswith the nunnery is said to have been destroyed by the sea, but this may be a reference to the destruction of the later first Benedictine priory and its re establishment at the parish church. (See TR 23 NW 17). There seems to be no evidence for the exact site of St. Eanswith's nunnery, but the supposition that it was reoccupied by the first Benedictine priory seems likely in view of St Eanswith's reputation. If so, it would have been at C. TR 231359. A reliquary, thought to be St. Eanswith's, was found concealed in a wall of the parish church in 1885 The traditional site of St Eanswith's Minster, was much disturbed in the later 18th century by the building of a fort. Earlier Leland in the 1540's noted a burial ground exposed here by coast erosion, and impressive ruins of ecclesiastical character which contained much Roman bonding tile and which he called 'a solemn old nunnery' Lambarde in 1826 reported much the same.