Richard Culmer (1597–1662)¶

Richard Culmer — the unlisted vicar of Minster — is buried in Monkton churchyard, though the exact location of his grave is unknown.

This infamous Puritan minister, active during the Commonwealth period under Cromwell, was known locally as “Blue Dick” for wearing a blue cassock instead of the traditional black.

From 1643 he was appointed ‘commissioner’ at Canterbury Cathedral, where he was notoriously zealous in “the utter demolishing… of all monuments of superstition” — destroying priceless stained glass, sculptures, paintings, and exterior adornments, both at the Cathedral and in his other parishes of Goodnestone, Chartham, Harbledown, St Stephen’s Hackington, and finally Minster.

The local congregation eventually threw him out, and he came to live in Monkton with his wife Katherine and their seven children. He died there on 20 March 1662, taken in by his neighbour the vicar of Monkton, Nicholas Thorowgood, of Parsonage House.

Culmer was buried two days later in Monkton churchyard, in a spot that remains unknown and unmarked — a fitting end, perhaps, for a man who attracted such widespread anger and condemnation during his life.