St Martin's Church

Situated slightly beyond Canterbury's city centre, St Martin' Church is England's oldest parish church in continuous use where continuous Christian worship has taken place since before 597AD.

The church was named after St. Martin, Bishop of Tours in France, where Queen Bertha lived before she married Ethelbert King of Kent. Believed to date back to Roman times, St Martin's was where St. Augustine's mission of 40 monks came before he had established the monastery at nearby St Augustine's Abbey.

The churchyard contains the graves of many notable local families and well-known people including Thomas Sidney Cooper, RA (artist) and Mary Tourtel, the creator of Rupert Bear.