In the mid-seventh century, Æthelburh, daughter of Æthelberht, the first Christian king of Kent, established one of England’s earliest Christian communities by the source of a pure chalk stream on the North Downs.
Æthelburh, or Ethelburga as she is now known locally, had been married off to King Edwin of Northumbria but after he was killed in battle (a common fate for Anglo-Saxon kings), she returned home for a life of quiet aristocratic contemplation with God. She commissioned a convent and a small stone church on the hillside directly above the spring feeding the stream in the valley below.