Spoiler Alerts
Two lengthy best-selling novels by Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End describe life in Kent during the middle ages. The author depicts how the Catholic church exercised total control over the people, manipulating and sometimes taxing them to pay for many things, including the construction of magnificent churches. The churches were built as a means of glorification. *SPOILER ALERT* It was rarely God who was being glorified.
Those Follett books immediately came to mind when I took this photo of St. Mary’s Church in Dover. The original structure was built in the 10th century by the Saxons. Like the Romans before them, they used flint as the primary building material. Flint is a form of quartz, a hard, sedimentary rock that breaks with a conchoidal fracture, like glass. Flint is plentiful and easily mined in Kent, as it forms in the chalky soil that characterizes the region.
Just outside Dover’s Old Town I noticed that Downton Abbey is playing in the local cinema. I decided I would find no better place to view it. *SPOILER ALERT* If you loved the television series, you’ll love the movie.