A nearby steeple had been broken off short and the fragments lay heaped beside it.
The story is that the Abbot of St Augustine, Canterbury, diverted the funds by which the sea-wall protecting Earl Godwin's island was kept up, for the purpose of building Tenterden steeple, the consequence being that in 1099 an inundation took place and ."Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands."
He died quite suddenly and in the full swing of his literary activity on the 13th of October 1899, at Steeple Court, Botley, Hants.
The central steeple fell in 1506, but was rebuilt, the new tower with its spire reaching a height of 198 ft.
Of a Franciscan friary there remains the Perpendicular Grey Friars' Steeple, and the doorway remains of a priests' college founded in 1502.
