STONE-CUM-EBONY

 ( Stone - literally 'at the stone'. A meeting place or boundary marker. In this case, the name means 'Stone with Ebony' - Ebony being a village in the Oxney Hundred. So the stone in question was probably marking the boundary between the two villages)

A book I was reading reckoned that the church and surrounds of Stone-In-Oxney was worth visiting. Although I'd never been there, I  know where the Isle of Oxney lies, so  I was sure I could just follow the signs for it.

Oh dear, it's small wonder foreign tourists get lost in this strange country of ours. 

So I left Appledore heading towards the Isle of Oxney. Of course, it was an island once, but since the draining of the marshes etc., it is no more.

I don't see any signposts for Stone-in-Oxney, but I do come across a few with just 'Stone' written on them. I figure they must just be saving the cost of bigger signs, and that it's where I'm  heading for.

Didn't think I'd find Stone-in-Oxney .........but that's because the village actually lies within the parish of Stone-Cum-Ebony! This confusion is why the signs just say Stone.............

Just to confuse you further:.................

Here is Stone in/cum/green/Ebony/Oxney. If having five variations of the village name in one street isn't bad enough,  Ebony church, which is now called the church of St. Mary the Virgin, Tenterden..............yes, really,  .....................is actually in the hamlet of Reading Street, 3.8 miles from Stone, and 3.5 miles from Tenterden! 

It's a pretty church, surrounded by some lovely tudor houses.  It was rebuilt following a serious fire in 1464, and little of any earlier building survives. There is conjecture that St Mary’s stands on the site of a Roman Mithraic temple, although the earliest record of a church here is a document, held at the Dean and Chapter, Canterbury Cathedral, dated 1265. The first recorded vicar of the 13th century church is one Thomas de Maydenston who served from 1287.

commemorative shrubbery planted in honour of the Festival of Britain in 1951

The church is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin.

lovely Tudor house skirting the churchyard

This is a Roman Mithraic altar, that was being used as a horse mounting block at the nearby Ferry Inn for many years, before being moved to the vicarage garden, and from there to St Mary’s.

It is 3ft 4ins tall, has a hollowed out top like a basin, and the carved figure of a bull, halfway down on the side. It is made from Kentish ragstone, probably quarried near Hythe where the Romans built Stutfall Castle and the harbour at Port Lemanus, on the old course of the River Rother, then known as the Limen. A straightforward journey along the navigable Limen would have brought the stone to Oxney.

Mithraism, the worship of Mithra, the Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract, and war in pre-Zoroastrian Iran. Known as Mithras in the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries ce, this deity was honoured as the patron of loyalty to the emperor.

Until the nineteenth century the north chapel, separated from the church by a medieval screen, was the village school.