Legend has it that monks from the Abbey of Lyra, in Normandy, crossed over to the Island, and landed at Monks' Bay. They built a small curious edifice on the woody plateau where the Old Church now stands and dedicated it to St. Boniface. It is said that they chose for their site the ruins of a Saxon Church, and this is supported by the fact that they dedicated their Church to a Saxon Saint, though they themselves were Normans.

Old Church

The Church is only 48ft in length by 12ft wide, and it is the type of a private chapel. The Chancel and the south door are examples of the earliest Norman architecture, the door made of planks placed horizontally within, perpendicularly without, and studded with nails.

The porch is comparatively modern, crosses have been cut in its sides, and the bell cot was erected in 1794.

"I may be pardoned a brief retrospect over the war years, so far as the 'Old Church' is concerned... I can say that, from her outlook overlooking the Channel, she kept prayerful watch, literally in the front line of this Country's coastal defence,

All the windows are later (12th and 15th Century).

following the evacuation of Dunkirk... She saw the Battle of Britain first joined overhead, and four mornings after she felt the shocks of the first concentrated bombing by enemy aircraft within and about her parish boundaries."
H. de Vere Stacpoole
The grave of a man called Charlie Wilcox can be found at the Old Church. Wilcox was the godson of Lewis Carroll, and suffered from tuberculosis. Whilst Carroll nursed him at Guildford, it is believed that he wrote the famous poem 'The Hunting of the Snark'. Wilcox moved to the Island for convalescence but unfortunately died in 1874, aged just 22 and was buried at the Old Church.

Lewis Carroll was a friend of Tennyson, who lived on the Island for some time, as did other such famous literary figures as Dickens, H De Vere Stacpoole, John Keats, A C Swinburne and Elizabeth Sewell.