let me tell you a story to chill the bones. of one of the earliest fancy churches built in re-Christianised Britain post the landing of Augustine in 597 AD: Reculver. and it got knocked down in... 1809.

The story begins with the Roman fort of Regulbium on the N coast of Kent, which was established in masonry in early 3rdc. like Bradwell further up the east coast in Essex, it was reused for a major new religious foundation by the Christian Roman missionaries to Kent in the 6thc.

By the 8thc, the church at Reculver was a miniature basilica with the altar in front of a monumental triple arch behind reusing Imperial-era brick from the fort. behind this was an apse for the community of priests who would minister to the people around in the Kentish kingdom.

this minster system started to diminish in favour of local churches with a resident priest by the 12thc, hastened by the wholesale secular and ecclesiastical reform by the Normans. in the parish church boom, Reculver received a huge W block befitting its previous status.

Reculver went on as a regular parish church through the middle ages. although much was changed, like a regular square-ended 13thc chancel, the antique triple arch remained, until the sea started to encroach on it by the early 19thc...

In 1809, the vicar Christopher Naylor, allegedly at the behest of his mother saying it "was keep for a poppet show" cast a deciding vote to have it demolished. tho I reckon it's deflection from diocese of Canterbury's wanton vandalism. Only the 12thc front was kept for navigation

Drums and capitals of two of the columns, which may well date from the time of Augustine, were found in an orchard near Canterbury in 1852 along with bits near Herne Bay. they were exhibited in the precincts until being moved into the cathedral crypt in 1932, where they are today

none of these photos are mine: never been to the site despite banging on about it for best part of a decade. never looked at the columns at Canterbury either as I've never spent enough time there either.

props tho the wiki page has been always been good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary%27s_Church,_Reculver

(some of the engravings in this thread I re-sourced from http://archive.org  and other places, and while I probably ought to re-add the better versions to commons, wikipedia just intimidates me)

but to say. if this was a working church today, we wouldn't know all the archaeology as found by C.R. Peers c.1927, and the altar platform (marked A) being in front of the triple arch (as used in the super cross-section visualisation of the early church by Peter Urmston upthread)

the whole "poppet show" thing (which basically means, it's only fit to fund a punch and judy show) crops up in antiquarian literature: but really, how many men had a vote on it? and you just pin it all on a lady who didn't even have a direct vote? Blame Charles Manners-Sutton.

oldest standing church in Britain lieu of Reculver's demolition, as mentioned above: St Peter-on-the-Wall, Bradwell-on-Sea, in late 3rdc fort of Othona. colonised by St Cedd from Northumbria, also had a triple arch. lapsed into a chapel, then barn, then was realised what it was

i have actually been here and man is it a long drive from anywhere. still it's fun with a friend and a doggo