Folkestone's parish church occupies high ground above the Channel, close enough to the cliff edge that the sea is audible in the churchyard. Its dedication is the key to its importance. Eanswythe was a princess of the Kentish royal house in the first Christian generation of Anglo-Saxon England, and she is remembered as the founder of one of the earliest religious communities for women in the country, established on this exposed coast. Her cult survived the destruction of that community, and relics venerated as hers are preserved within the church, an unusual continuity for an English parish. The building itself is medieval, with the accumulated repairs, memorials and Victorian restoration typical of a coastal church that has weathered storms, invasion scares and changing congregations. The film treats the site on three levels: as a place of Anglo-Saxon foundation, as a working parish church with a living congregation, and as a viewpoint over a stretch of coast that has been England's front door for two thousand years.
