St Edmund's Chapel

St Edmund’s Chapel stands beside the old Maison Dieu in Dover, a small rubble-built church only 8.5 metres long and 4.3 metres wide. It was raised in the 13th century as a wayside chapel for the poor and for pilgrims heading to Canterbury. The walls are two feet thick, faced with Caen stone, and the building was first consecrated in 1253 by Bishop Richard of Chichester. He chose the chapel as the place for his final sermon and died soon after in the Maison Dieu. His organs were removed here before burial in Chichester Cathedral, making the chapel a pilgrimage site in its own right. After the monasteries were dissolved in the 16th century the chapel passed through naval stores and shop cellars. By the 19th century it had become a two-storey house and forge. In 1943 shellfire stripped away the shops that hid it, leaving the chapel untouched. Plans to demolish it in the 1960s were halted when a local priest bought the building. A year-long restoration used medieval methods and revealed much of the original fabric. Today the chapel is an ecumenical place of worship, maintained by the St Edmund of Abingdon Memorial Trust. It hosts Saturday morning Eucharists and candle-lit services for the feast days of St Edmund and St Richard. The Archbishop of Canterbury led prayers here on Good Friday 2014, an event likely unmatched for centuries. Though public access is now infrequent, the building remains a quiet witness to Dover’s medieval and modern past.