Ebony / Reading Street

The present font in this church is modern and consists of a moulded octagonal basin raised on a plain and slender octagonal stem with splaying lower base. The Parish website [http://www.ebonychurch.co.uk/pages/history.html] [accessed 13 February 2010] informs: "This church formerly stood on the island of Ebony, the hogsback you see on the right as you go down the road to Appledore. The old graveyard is still there [...] How the church came to be moved here, to Reading Street, in 1858 – a good mile from its old site – is explained in a note by the Rev. W W Kirby, Vicar of Appledore and Ebony 1856-62, which is framed on the north wall. Briefly the population had long deserted the island for the healthier and more accessible hamlet of Reading Street, the nearest house was three quarters of a mile away and the fabric of the church was in bad need of repair. With great initiative, the new Vicar and his Churchwarden decided to pull the old building down to move the stone work by horse and cart over a mile of rough track, and to build it anew. The whole job was done in three months at a cost of £270 – to the credit of Mr S Teale the architect and with well known local builders Bourne and Chandle of Woodchurch [...] Ebony is included in the AD1070 list of churches in Kent [Domesday Monachorum?] and there are many records of the mediaeval church on the island. It used to be much larger and richly furnished with all the ornaments of the pre-reformation church. [NB: we have no information on the earlier font(s) of the medieval church; it may have been destroyed in the 16th century, or removed (?) and replaced at the time of the move in 1848]