You will search in vain for the parish church of Sarre. That ancient building fell into decay when the port itself ceased to be a seaport and dwindled to its present condition of a small village; and the ruined walls of it became, in the usual manner, a useful quarry for the local farmers engaged in building cowsheds and out-buildings, until all traces of them disappeared. This church stood on the hill-top between Sarre and Monkton. The church of St. Nicholas-at-Wade now serves for Sarre. It stands prominently ahead, on the hill-top, with tall black-flint tower, and opposite it is a group of picturesque seventeenth-century houses, of Dutch-like aspect. The dedication to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, marks the ancient maritime situation of the place, and the termination “at-Wade” is a corruption of the Latin “ad vadum”--that is to say, “at the ford”--an allusion to the passage of the Wantsum. CHAPTER X THANET’S CORNFIELDS--MONKTON--MINSTER-IN-THANET--BIRCHINGTON--QUEX PARK--WESTGATE--DANDELION. The enormous size of the cornfields of Thanet is immediately apparent, and is one of the most striking features of the Isle. The soil, too, is remarkably fertile; owing, according to the old monkish chronicles, to the Divine favour shown to the locality through the virtues of St. Augustine and his Christian mission. Nothing was too tough for the imaginations of those mediæval monks to assimilate. Three miles across these vast, hedgeless fields, whose waving, golden corn in August meets the blue zenith with a startling contrast, is Minster--“Minster-in-Thanet,” more particularly to distinguish it from Minster-in-Sheppey. It is reached through Monkton, a little wayside village, where the old stocks still stand by the grassy selvedge of the road, outside the church. Minster forms one of the most popular excursions for the summer tripper at Margate or Ramsgate. I think they do not come precisely for sake of its archæological associations or its religious history, but rather because there are popular tea-gardens in the village and the beer at the several inns is supposed to be of super-excellence. The founding of the original monastery, at Minster, for nuns, was accompanied, according to the legend, by miraculous interpositions, but these are so common in the story of early religious houses that we are not in the least surprised at them; nor is there any room for astonishment in learning that the Saxon King, who, very greatly against his instincts, gave the land for the monastery, did so give it as expiation for murder.