History of Boxley Church

Boxley, Detling and Thurnham churches are in a straight line. It is thought that they are standing on the old Roman road which came from Rochester. The pathway that leads to the churchyard may indicate where the Roman road was sited.
There is no evidence of a church existing at Boxley in Saxon times or before 1100 A.D. During restoration work on the church in 1857, an urn was found, thought to be Romano-British, which was considered to be thirteenth century, same date as parts of the main building.

Boxley Abbey

Boxley is most widely known for its Abbey, founded in 1146, but the remains of which have now all but disappeared.  It came to have, in the Abbey Church, the ‘miraculous’ Holy Rood of Grace’.  This was a figure of Christ upon the Cross, which tradition says was so cleverly made by an English carpenter, whilst a prisoner in France, that it could nod and wink and move its limbs and frown and smile.  The monks encouraged the many pilgrims, who called at the Abbey, to lay down gifts and see, in these movements, signs that they, the pilgrims, might be leading good enough lives to lead them to Heaven.  Sadly, it was the monks hiding ‘behind the scenes’ who were pulling strings to achieve the appropriate nods and winks from the figure of Christ and the most favourable signs were given to those pilgrims who had donated the largest gifts.

          There was a similar ‘miracle’ in the form of a stone figure of a saint, which only the pure of heart could lift.  But, of course, for the right gift a hidden monk would press a lever to assist the figure to rise.

          As a result of all this trickery, the gifts from thousands of pilgrims made the Abbey extremely rich.  The Cistercian monks, who were supposed to lead simple and holy lives, became wealthy and corrupt.  When Henry VIII dissolved all the English Abbeys and Monasteries in the 1530’s the trickery at Boxley was exposed and helped to justify Henry’s actions.