The church and gatehouse at Minster are built on the highest part of the Isle of Sheppey, most of which is flat, barely above sea level and marshy! This high point obviously attracted earlier settlers, and there is an interesting local history museum in the main body of the gatehouse. The view starts with the church and the angular roof of the top of the stairs up, and then swings east, showing first the North Sea behind the car-park, followed by the Thames Estuary with distant views of Essex, particularly Shoeburyness, then Southend. Just before the tall chimney of the works on the Isle of Grain, you can just see the port of Sheerness, which is separated from the former by the Medway. From then on the distant gleams of water are from the Swale, the channel which separates Sheppey from the mainland. Finally, as the top of the telescope appears you have a view along the west facing slope of the hillside, tailing off towards Eastchurch and Leysdown-on-sea.

This 360 degree view was taken on 21st August 1999, from the top of the gatehouse at Minster, Sheppey. Produced by stitching together 9 digital photos, taken with my Olympus C900 camera, using Panorama Factory by Smoky City Design , off PC Plus Superdisc 172A. This is then displayed by a Javascript applet, SLIDER, written by CodeBrain.