Copyright Kent Past 2010
Kent Past
The History of Kent
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History of Minster-
Minster comes from the Old English ‘mynster’ meaning a ‘monastery, the church of a monastery’. The Domesday Book chronicles Minster as Tanet.
It is said that King Egbert of Kent arranged the death of his nephews, whom his councillor Thunor said ‘are plotting to take your throne’. When they discovered the deceased’s bodies behind the king’s throne, he agreed to give their sister Ermenburga as much land as her pet hind could cover in a day. King Egbert subsequently founded a nunnery on the land, with Ermenburga as Abbess. She took the name Eva, becoming known as Domna Eva. The minster eventually gave its name to the parish, the largest on the Island.
The Danes burnt the original building to the ground in the ninth century, with the death of 70 nuns and townspeople. In 1027, the monks of St Augustine’s Abbey, in Canterbury rebuilt the Abbey. Further building extensions followed the Norman Conquest. After the reformation, it passed into private hands until 1937 when a group of Benedictine sisters took it over as a daughter priory to Eichstadt, Bavaria.
Minster parish church is a Grade: I listed building, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin,
and dates to the early Saxon period. The Normans built a tower together with a chancel
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Minster railway station opened on the South Eastern Railway’s Canterbury to Margate section of the Ashford to Margate branch line, on 1 December 1846. Minster became a junction with the opening of the line to Deal on 1 July 1847…. more