The decline of All Saints' Church and the community of Shuart may have begun with the Black Death of 1348–9. Further, this decline coincides with the closing of the adjacent Wantsum Channel. This channel had been a preferred route for sea-borne trade between England and continental Europe in medieval times, probably providing "a large part of the early prosperity of Kent", besides supporting a local industry collecting salt, but it was progressively blocked by silt. While tax records of the 15th century show that the inhabitants of Shuart had then included men of the Cinque Port of Dover, shipping through the Wantsum Channel had ceased by about the end of the 15th century, and the northern section adjacent to Shuart was merely a creek by the middle of the 16th century. The abandonment of the church presumably arose through the cost of keeping two churches – All Saints and St Nicholas – in what had become a "remote, rural parish". Shuart continued to be represented in tax records in the 17th century: in 1624 it was assessed as a "vill" at the rate of £4.6s.4d (£4.32) for the archaic taxes known as "fifteenths and tenths" – this rate had been fixed in 1334, and may be compared with the rate for St Nicholas-at-Wade of £10.7s (£10.35) – and Shuart appears as a borgh, or tithing, in records of the Hearth Tax for 1673. However, the parish as a whole was in decline. In 1563 the parish of St Nicholas-at-Wade was the second smallest on the Isle of Thanet by number of households, having only 33, and by 1800 there were "not ... near so many". By 1723 the settlement of Shuart was a matter of historical record only. John Lewis wrote then that seems as if anciently a Vill or Town belonged to [the chapel of All Saints]", and the only building recorded by Lewis was a "good farm house". The farmhouse was built in the late 17th century and still stands, but otherwise today Shuart is considered a deserted medieval village.