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The City of Canterbury
The City of Canterbury
Tourism has provided Canterbury with a living for almost a thousand years. Canterbury Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with St Augustine’s Church, founded by St Augustine in 597, and St Martin’s Church, the oldest parish church still in use in England), is one of the oldest religious foundations in England. By the time Chaucer’s pilgrims set off for Canterbury in the late 1380s, people had been visiting the tomb of St Thomas Becket and the site of his martyrdom for nearly two hundred years. They continued to visit for another two hundred years, until the shrine was destroyed in 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Becket was murdered in the cathedral’s north-west transept and over nine hundred years later it is still a powerfully atmospheric spot. Other things worth seeing include the crypt, with its huge carved pillars and decorative capitals supporting the roof, and the ambulatory with its side chapels, some of which still have vestigial wall paintings and graffiti. In the north aisle of the quire there is a very well preserved and unusual wall painting, of the legend of St Eustace.
Outside, the cloisters and chapter house are reminders of the cathedral’s monastic past, and there are many other interesting architectural features. More mundanely, you may also meet the cathedral cat on patrol. Despite its role as the mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion, the cathedral and its close are very domestic in scale (unlike, say, Salisbury’s cathedral close), with the secular city pressing in on all sides.
Despite the best endeavours of generations of town planners, not to mention one of Hitler’s so-called Baedeker Raids, elements of the medieval street plan still remain, especially in the lanes around the cathedral. One or two streets still follow the line of the Roman town plan. Parts of the city wall remain, although they were rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and it is possible to walk along them particularly by the bus station and close to the cathedral.
The Westgate gives some idea of what it would have been like to enter into the city as a pilgrim coming from London; these days the effect is best experienced by taking the bus from the campus into the city centre, as the southbound road still passes directly through the gate. Henry II passed through on foot, having walked from St Dunstan’s church, dressed in sackcloth and ashes, doing penance for the murder of Becket.
Canterbury’s High Street, and also St Dunstan’s Street, beyond the Westgate, was once lined with inns and hostels catering especially for the pilgrim trade. Although a number still remain, they are mostly hidden behind shop facades, not easily identified and not fully accessible to the public. However, the Eastbridge Hospital remains much as it originally was and gives some idea of what a pilgrim might expect to find. The Canterbury Experience also promises to recreate the journey of Chaucer’s pilgrims as they make their way to the city. Also concealed behind the High Street is Greyfriars Chapel, the oldest Franciscan building in England, set in beautiful gardens, and unusual because it is actually built over one branch of the River Stour.
Later visitors to the city inevitably included Queen Elizabeth, who stayed at an inn on the High Street, now in part occupied by Caffe Nero. The massive bay window, totally out of scale with the rest of the building, was clearly part of an effort to make the place fit for a queen, as was the elaborate if hastily executed plasterwork ceiling in the front room on the first floor. It’s well worth the price of an espresso to go and admire it.
Canterbury’s most famous and most recalcitrant son, Christopher Marlowe, is far less visible. He was born in the city, and went to school at the King’s School, but most other buildings associated with him have been lost, including St George’s Church, at which he was christened, of which only the tower remains. He is, however, commemorated in the name of Canterbury’s much-loved theatre, the Marlowe.
Much of Canterbury’s history is recorded and collected in the city’s various museums, including Canterbury Roman Museum, Canterbury Royal Museum and Art Gallery (housed in an utterly over-the-top piece of ‘vernacular’ Victorian architecture, and also containing work by local artist, Thomas Sidney Cooper) and the Museum of Canterbury, housed in the Poor Priests’ Hospital, worth visiting for the building alone, though the museum is also very appealing. (It also includes the Rupert Bear Museum – Rupert’s creator, Mary Tourtel, was born in Canterbury and studied at the Sidney Cooper School of Art.)
There are other suggestions for things to do in Canterbury here.
Canterbury Tourist Information Office is in Sun Street, just opposite the entrance to the cathedral.