The _Nave_ then has strong claims to Roman origin, without any reference to the _Chancel_. Mr Livett, however, claims that, whatever be the date of the nave, the brickwork of the original _Chancel_ is certainly earlier, and contends that "the oldest portion of the existing building comprises (1) the side walls of the chancel, extending for 20 feet; (2) the foundations of the destroyed Adjunct that once stood on the south side of the chancel; (3) a portion of the east wall of the nave on either side of the chancel-arch, and (4) certain foundations under the floor of the nave, supposed to be a continuation of the chancel side-walls." It is possible that he is rather too sanguine in concluding that a general agreement has been reached on these points. But, assuming (for the sake of argument) that the chancel is the earlier, then, if we can establish a reasonable probability of a Roman date for the nave, _cadit quæstio_, so far as the "pro-Saxon" controversialists are concerned. On the other hand, even though it be proved that the _Nave_ is post-Roman, yet still the _Chancel_ may be Roman, since it is in their opinion of confessedly greater antiquity. Is there anything in the _Chancel_ to militate against its Roman origin? It is built in _opus lateritium_, bricks laid evenly upon one another, an ordinary style of Roman masonry; for instances of which we may refer to remains found at the Roman villas at Wingham and Darenth, at the Studfall Roman castrum at Lympne, the blocked sluice-gate in the Silchester city wall, and countless other places. Allusion has been already made to Mr Micklethwaite's paper on "Saxon Church Building," in which, perhaps somewhat too confidently, he assigns to the Saxon periods the churches of Reculver, Brixworth, St. Pancras, etc. etc. It is a remarkable fact that the plan of St. Martin's Church (either with or without its reputed eastern apse) does not in many essential points agree with the plan of a single one of the churches therein described. And yet, if we accept the date of St. Martin's as post-Roman, it must have been built within less than a hundred years of most of them. He lays special stress on the apparent identity of character between the work at _St. Pancras_ and in the _Chancel of St. Martin's_, saying that the "date of one must be very near to that of the other," and as he does not believe that St. Pancras can be Roman, therefore the same may be predicated of St. Martin's. But he makes many assumptions to prove this, taking imaginary sketches and theories for ascertained facts. Even so, the shape of the supposed apse is different in the two, and there is no north porch at St. Martin's as there is at St. Pancras, and if it can be established (as seems likely from recent discoveries) that there was an original chancel-arch at St. Martin's west of the side-chapel, the dissimilarity is even more apparent.