St Eanswythe was an Anglo-Saxon saint who first established the Christian church
in Folkestone. Her parents were Eadbald King of Kent and Emma daughter of the King
of the Franks. Emma was a Christian but Eadbald appears to have had pagan and sometimes
Christian beliefs. Eanswythe's grandparents were King AEthelberht of Kent and Queen
Bertha who both welcomed St Augustine when he arrived in Kent in 597AD. In 630AD
Eadbald built a chapel for Eanswythe in his castle somewhere in The Bayle (street)
area east of the present church in Folkestone. This chapel was dedicated to St Peter
& St Paul. Here a community of nuns settled with Eanswythe as the Abbess and Founder
of the First religious Community for women in England. The date of Eanswythe's death
is usually given as 640AD. It is said that she chose not to marry and refused a Northumbrian
prince as suitor, when his pagan prayers failed a test she put to him, by not succeding
in lengthening a beam required for the building of the church. Her own Christian
prayers succeeded. Other legends include providing water for her convent by making
it flow uphill from the stream a mile away, restoring the sight of the blind and
forbidding the birds to eat the nun's corn.
Eanswythe's Saint's Day is on 12th September.
This is the date when her relics were translated to the new church in 1138. These
relics were rediscovered in a small leaden Saxon casket in the north wall of the
High Alter Sanctuary in 1885, when work on the present alabaster arcading of the
chancel was being undertaken. In 1980 the bones were examined and catalogued by an
expert. The conclusion was that they came from one human skeleton, a young female
adult aged between 18 & 25 years and about 5'4" in height. This is consistent with
Eanswythe's life story, and is therefore, one of the few churches in England that
still contains the remains of its patron saint, as the majority of relics had been
destroyed at the reformation.
