3-053-724 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Isle of Thanet [in Kent]: Minster Church, 1873. 'Dompneva was [the] first abbess [of St. Mary's Convent], succeeded by her daughter, St. Mildred, who was followed by Eadburga, the builder of a more stately pile. All the seventy nuns, with their abbess, were slain, in 1011, by the ferocious Danes, when the convent was utterly destroyed; but its site and endowments were afterwards possessed by the monks of St. Augustine. These monks erected the church dedicated to St. Mary, which is a handsome building - the nave Norman, the chancel and transept Early English, with eighteen collegiate stalls in the chancel. It contains two large altar-tombs of black marble, richly decorated with fantastic sculpture; also the tomb of Edila de Thorne, stripped of its brass, and the bible-pew, where a copy of the sacred book was chained to the desk'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.