This entry is for a site at Lyminge, SE Kent, which was reported by Rev. Robert Jenkins, rector of Lyminge, in 1861. According to Jenkins, the removal of some farm buildings at Great Woodlands, Lyminge adjacent to the boundary wall revealed a quantity of ashlar and worked Romanesque masonry sculpture embedded into quite old mortar. This material apparently included chevron voussoirs, 'embattled' (fret) and billet mouldings together with other typical motifs, and parts of string-courses. There were also fourteen capitals, all of differing design.
With the permission of the farm owner, Miss Tournay, Jenkins (as he reports in his article for Archaeologia Cantiana of 1861) was able to 'take down the portions of the wall in which these stones were found, and to remove any which appeared to me to be of antiquarian value'. Jenkins also mentions similar material elsewhere in the locality which he saw in walls 'at North Lyminge, at Ottinge, at Longage, and in an ancient wall belonging to the Rectory'. Some of the mouldings apparently matched material at these sites. In August 2021 a double capital was found at old Robus, north Lyminge, which could possibly be one of the items which Jenkins saw (see CRSBI report for Old Robus, Lyminge).
Eight capitals (or perhaps seven as two are captioned '3') together with a piece of string-course are illustrated in Jenkins' report. According to Ron Baxter, the capitals are all variants of the scallop and trefoil type; many have beaded decoration, and one has a foliate motif. There is unfortunately no scale on the illustration; one assumes they probably belonged to nook-shafts rather than the main elevation of a church.
The present-day whereabouts of this material is not known, but its preservation in a museum store is technically still within the bounds of possibility; it is hoped that the material illustrated (reproduced here) may help identification one day.