The Early Nor­man tower, A.D. 1100–1110. was orig­i­nally a west tower of a sub­se­quently destroyed Nor­man nave The remains of the lat­ter can still be seen, in frag­ments on the south side of the Church, exter­nally, where the tower abuts on the present chan­cel. These remains are a ruin of rather ragged masonry, resem­bling but not actu­ally a but­tress. The orig­i­nal Nor­man Church was a west tower, with nave (now the present chan­cel) and a short chan­cel. This extended a lit­tle beyond the present east wall; the orig­i­nal east wall being semi-circular in shape, the old foun­da­tions of this were exca­vated some years ago.

A roll of the Vic­ars of Lympne. or Limene as it was then called, dates back to the year A.D. 1291. Later the word was spelt Lymene fit has also been spelt Limme, Lymme, Lymen. Limne), In A.D. 1435 it appears as Lymne and in A.D. 1610 it was Limpne, though the “p” had appeared in the word as early as A.D. 1514 when it was writ­ten “Lymine alias Lympne”. In 1982 the Rev­erend P. Good­sell was installed as Parish Priest, the parish then being joined with the parishes of Sell­indge, Monks’ Hor­ton, and Stowt­ing under the care of one priest. This con­tin­ued dur­ing the Incum­bency of the Rev­erend D. Han­cock but in the year 2000 the Rev­erend Paul Fos­ter was installed as Parish Priest and Lympne was joined with the parishes of Ald­ing­ton, Bils­ing­ton and Bon­ning­ton. In Decem­ber 2002 the incum­bancy passed to the Rev­erend Richard Love.

The adjoin­ing old Lympne Cas­tle or the Archdeacon’s House was erected in the reign of Henry V about A.D. 1420. There are traces of an older cas­tle dat­ing back to Roman days, the ruins of which, known as Stut­fall Cas­tle, are now to be seen at the foot of the hill, hav­ing slipped from the brow of the hill on which the present cas­tle stands, as some con­jec­ture. It is more prob­a­ble that the orig­i­nal old Roman cas­tle stood where these ruins now exist.

In 1955 water was brought to the Church and a memo­r­ial erected west of the north porch, as a gift from Lady Haldin, in mem­ory of her hus­band. Sir Philip Haldin, of Lympne Place.

Near the Lych-gate, at the end of the church­yard wall, there are mount­ing steps, for those who came to church on horse-back. The Vil­lage War Memo­r­ial, com­mem­o­rat­ing the fallen of two World Wars, is also adja­cent At the east­ern end of the church­yard there are buried ser­vice­men who died dur­ing the World War of 1939–1945, most of them mem­bers of the Royal Air Force whose planes fought the Bat­tle of Britain in the skies overhead.

At the foot of Lympne hill are the ruins of a beau­ti­ful lit­tle church with traces of Nor­man and some ear­lier work It is men­tioned by Leland as “The Chireh of Our Ladye of West Hythe”.

From Lympne to Can­ter­bury there runs the road known as Stone Street This ancient high­way, prob­a­bly of Roman ori­gin, con­nected the port of West Hythe (now van­ished) with Can­ter­bury. Roman Legions may well have landed at this minor port and marched the miles to Can­ter­bury pass­ing the site of Lympne Church on their jour­ney. Later pil­grims to Becket’s shrine in Can­ter­bury Cathe­dral may well have passed the same way.

Lympne Parochial Church Coun­cil — 2002