"STONAR, a parish in the hundred of Ringslow, or Isle of Thanet, lathe of St. Augustine, county Kent, three quarters of a mile N.E. of Sandwich. It is supposed to have been under water in the Roman period, but on the sea retiring from Ebbs-fleet it was left dry, and in the 11th century became the site of a town and port of considerable importance, but again declined, owing to the ravages of the Danes and the inundations of the sea, and is now only a small hamlet. Leland describes it as "some time a pretty town, but then" (in the reign of Henry VIII.) "having only the ruin of the church, which some people call Old Sandwich." The living is a rectory in the diocese of Canterbury, in the patronage of the Crown by lapse. The church has long been destroyed, and no restoration has lately been made. Near the site of the church are works for the production of bay-salt."
[Transcribed from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland 1868 by Colin Hinson ©2010]