page_title: St Mary's Church, Reculver
section_title: St John's Cathedral, Parramatta
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary's Church, Reculver / St John's Cathedral, Parramatta
caption_attribution_description: English: St Johns, Parramatta, Sydney
context_page_description: St Mary's Church, Reculver, was founded in the 7th century as either a minster or a monastery on the site of a Roman fort at Reculver, which was then at the north-eastern extremity of Kent in south-eastern England. In 669, the site of the fort was given for this purpose by King Ecgberht of Kent to a priest named Bassa, beginning a connection with Kentish kings that led to King Eadberht II of Kent being buried there in the 760s, and the church becoming very wealthy by the beginning of the 9th century. From the early 9th century to the 11th the church was treated as essentially a piece of property, with control passing between kings of Mercia, Wessex and England and the archbishops of Canterbury. Viking attacks may have extinguished the church's religious community in the 9th century, although an early 11th-century record indicates that the church was then in the hands of a dean accompanied by monks. By the time of Domesday Book, completed in 1086, St Mary's was serving as a parish church.
context_section_description: The design of the twin towers, spires and west front of St John's Cathedral, Parramatta, in Sydney, Australia, which were added in 1817–1819, is based on those of St Mary's Church at Reculver. Efforts to save St Mary's Church were under way when Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth left England for Australia in 1809. Elizabeth Macquarie asked John Watts, the governor's aide-de-camp from 1814 to 1819, to design the towers for St John's Cathedral, and these, together with its west front, are the oldest remaining parts of an Anglican church in Australia, and are on the oldest site of continuous Christian worship there. In 1990 a stone from St Mary's Church was presented to St John's Cathedral by the Historic Building and Monuments Commission for England, now English Heritage.
caption: The facade of St John's Cathedral, Parramatta, NSW, Australia, in 2013
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