Site of Original St Mary Bredin Church, Rose Lane. A plaque just left of the BHS sign shows the outline of the church. (St Andrew's United Reform Church in the distance.)

St Mary Bredin was first built in the 12th Century by Hamo, the son of Vitalis (a knight in the service of Odo, the warrior Bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of William the Conqueror). Vitalis had built the nearby church of St Edmund Ridingate, demolished before any written records could survive. The first St Mary was a wooden church, the Saxon for 'boarded' being 'bredin', hence the suffix, to identify it from the five other St Marys' in Canterbury!

The wooden church was replaced by later Medieval structures, in a slightly different position, culminating in a Victorian church built in 1867, with a distinctive octagonal tower and spire.

St Mary Bredin met its end on the 1st of June 1942, in the 'Baedeker' raid that destroyed a large area of central Canterbury. The structure was demolished within months, though the last traces only went in 1952, when Rose Lane was widened (the altar and eastern end were in the middle of the current road). When the multi-storey car park opposite was built post-war, all burials from the churchyard were supposed to have been removed, but during the current redevelopment of the site, many graves were found. Sadly, the registers of many Victorian and 20th Century baptisms, marriages and burials were lost in the bombing.

St Mary Bredin, before and after the 1942 Blitz. The wooden houses on the right were destroyed by another raid days after the photograph was taken.

The congregation moved to the chapel at Nunnery Fields hospital. In 1957, a new St Mary Bredin was opened in Nunnery Fields, financed partly with £27000 from war damage claims, and has a thriving congregation.

The New St Mary Bredin, on the corner of Old Dover Road and Nunnery Fields.

Records at Cathedral Archives