Valuable piece of Herne Bay history reopened to the public after twenty years
The Reculver Towers have undergone restoration work, including on the roman Wall.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
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TVTranscript
00:00Recolva is a village just three miles along the coast from Herne Bay, and it's home to
00:05a halfway house of history, with the Recolva Towers having been a Roman settlement, a fort,
00:10a monastery, and then a church. Now, after more than ten years, members of the public
00:16can access the inside of the towers.
00:18Well, the Romans, Britons, and Saxons, all the way back in the 12th century doing that
00:24walk, might have been a bit fitter than me. They were part of a Christian sect known as
00:31the Recolvas here at Recolva Tower, and they would have had a bit of a better reward waiting
00:36for them at the top. That would have been their storage here, which would have mostly
00:40been gold. Well, no-one's really been up here in about 20 years because of the closure.
00:48When Emperor Claudius and the Romans conquered Britain in AD 43, it's widely believed that
00:53they used the River Wansum in Kent as a shortcut into the mainland from the sea. That meant
00:58they developed it from a settlement to a fort, which was then eventually turned into a 12th
01:03century monasteric church. But the Romans' brickwork can still be seen with these red
01:07tiles.
01:08Well, the history of the church, what we see here now is the remnants of a church that
01:14was built in the centre of the Roman fort when the Romans had gone, and it was owned
01:20by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who obviously was the bigwig, wasn't he, for this area?
01:25And it was formed by monks in about the 630s.
01:30With the small entryway, people were queuing up to get through the door, and told me it
01:33had been closed to them for what felt like so long.
01:36It's a really important site for the council and for Herne Bay. As you can probably see,
01:48it's drawing a lot of people here, so it's great to see so many people coming out.
01:54But it wasn't an easy journey. With the tower's location, the conservation efforts had to
01:58ensure the towers were not just suitable for the public, but for future generations to
02:03enjoy as well.
02:04So we started off with the Roman fort that surrounds the church, and getting all the
02:10brickwork and stonework that's still there from the Roman period into a condition where
02:15it's not going to deteriorate any more than it already has.
02:19We then started doing some conservation work on the main parts of the church other than
02:24the towers as phase two, and then phase three, obviously the biggest project of them all
02:28was to get these towers into a fit state.
02:33Well from the 1st century to the 12th and now in the 21st, hopefully this piece of Kentish
02:37history can stand the test of time.
02:39Finn McDermid for KMTV in Recolva.