St Paul's church overlooking the bay
Introduction
The photograph on this page of St Paul's church overlooking the bay by Neil Owen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
St Paul's church overlooking the bay
Image: © Neil Owen Taken: 12 Oct 2021
Perched up on Monk's Hill, the ancient parish church has fabulous views over Sand Bay. Founded in the twelfth century, the church discovered a grim relic: fragments of a dark-stained wooden cup were found in 1849. In 1170, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was murdered in the sanctuary by knights perhaps mistakenly under orders from Henry the Young King. One of the knights was Richard fitz Urse; his grandson was William de Courtenay - the founder of the nearby Woodspring Priory in around 1210. It is believed that the wooden cup is stained by the blood of the poor Archbishop.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.365483
Longitude
-2.956597