Vol. 93 1977 page 045

Wykeham-Martin withdrew his support before the work was finished and the excavations were back-filled. The account in J.B.A.A. was written by one of the early members of the K.A.S., Alfred Pryer of Hollingbourne, and he stated that a crypt was found with the apse of the church, the latter consisting of three masses of masonry of square form, apparently piers, faced with Caen stone with very thin mortar joints and clear tool-marks on the faces. At an angle, there was the lower part of a small pillar thought to be Norman. All this fits very well with the apsidal chapel in the south transept revealed by our recent digging, so that I am inclined to identify it with what Pryer described as 'the apse of the church'. His three Caen stone 'piers' would be the two ashlar buttresses on the exterior of the apse together with the south jamb of the entrance with its nook-shaft aptly described as a small Norman pillar, while the description he gives of the close jointing and tool-marks agrees exactly. Moreover, he includes a clear description of tile mosaic, matching that found by us on an adjoining part of the transept floor. His reference to a crypt may be a		misapprehension due to the low floor-level of the Norman church in relation to later work. Certainly nothing found in our excavations suggested the existence of a crypt, and the present absence of any trace of the east end of the Norman presbytery makes it unlikely that the apse referred to by Pryer occupied that position. The account also mentions two Bethersden marble bases for clustered shafts, found where the aisles and nave would have been, and this agrees with the evidence for the form of the pier arcade provided by the remains of the north-east respond. In the garden of the farmhouse there are a number of carved stones almost certainly brought there from the Priory in or soon after 1846, and in the garden wall, facing the main road (B 2163), there is embedded a moulded capital exactly similar to that found in 1975 on the Priory site and illustrated here in Fig. 3, no. 1. Apart, therefore, from the disputed existence of the crypt, the account of 1847 in no way seriously conflicts with our recent findings, nor can it be said to add materially to the information obtained by the latest investigation.
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