Stone Chapel, Kent

Faversham Stone Chapel also known as Our Lady of Elwarton, is a medieval chapel built on top of a Romano-British mausoleum. The chapel is located in what is thought to have been the Roman settlement of Durolevum, near the modern town of Faversham, in Kent, England. It is the only known chapel in England to incorporate the remains of a pagan shrine or mausoleum.

Although the site now lies in a rural area on the outskirts of modern Faversham, during Roman times the area was well populated. There was probably a Roman army camp located at Judd Hill, where there is evidence of a large structure (possibly a fort), and where numerous Roman artifacts have been found. A Roman cemetery containing the remains of some three hundred and eighty-seven burials is located a few hundred yards east from the church, and a number of Roman coins and other artifacts have been found in the field where the church stands. In 2012, Paul Wilkinson and a team of archeologists discovered and excavated an enormous cockpit-style Roman theatre seating up to 12,000 in Faversham; it is believed to be the first theatre of its kind to be built in Britain. This evidence of Roman occupation has led researchers to believe that Faversham may be the site of Roman Durolevum, mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary.

The Roman building is roughly square, with walls about 17 feet long, and about 3 feet wide. The walls were built using a typically Roman technique, with a flint foundation and layers of tufa blocks, separated by a double layer of red brick and inch thick. The windowless structure had a vaulted roof, and a monolithic door constructed of greensand stone. The cill of the doorway is still in place, while the stones which formed the door frame were reused in the 13th century medieval buttresses. The floor of the structure was originally opus signinum, a hard waterproof concrete made with broken down tiles or bricks, giving it a reddish color. The walls were finished with plaster, which was painted red, and was possibly decorated with frescoes.

The size and nature of the flint foundation suggest that this structure was a Roman mausoleum, though in the absence of burials, this interpretation cannot be confirmed. As there is no villa or cemetery nearby, alternate explanations of the structure are that it was a Romano-Pagan temple or a small Christian Shrine.

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