In 2008 Canterbury Archaeological Trust carried out a watching brief in the churchyard. The earliest archaeological feature encountered during the monitoring of the new service trench was a 0.80m wide east-west aligned masonry foundation with a single course of standing masonry along its southern side. Located 8m north of the porch’s north wall, the foundation and the standing wall fragment were both constructed mainly of medium-sized coursed unknapped irregular natural flints set in mid-pale creamy white coarse aggregate lime mortar. Whilst the foundation continued below the base of the service trench its upper surface, which was only exposed along its northern edge was 0.28 below the present ground surface, whilst the top of the standing wall fragment was 0.20m below. Despite only a short length of masonry walling being exposed perpendicular to the service trench line during this phase of archaeological monitoring, in recent years a further continuation of this wall had been encountered during the renewal of the cemetery path surface. Unfortunately this was not recorded under archaeological conditions, but was anecdotally reported by Mr P Gausden, the vicar of the church who communicated ‘… that during replacement of the current path’s tarmac surface, a length of masonry walling similar to the wall exposed in the service trench was observed running across the width of the path…’. This further anecdotal record suggests its alignment was traceable westwards across the line of the path, extending its encountered length in excess of 2.2m. (information summarised from source) (1)

<1> Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2009, Archaeological watching brief at St Mary Magdalene Church, Monkton Street, Monkton, Thanet, Kent (Unpublished document). SKE17897.