Trail of the Archbishop: Roman and Medieval Canterbury

Canterbury is a town rightly famous for its cathedral, but the earlier history of the site is equally important and interesting. This walk will examine the Roman remains of the town as well as the more famous and less well-known medieval buildings. A picture of Roman Britain and of medieval England will emerge from our excursion.

We will meet at Canterbury West station where the train from London arrives. From here we will enter the city through the Westgate, the same sight that so many pilgrims experienced. The gate may lie on the site of the Roman gate into the city, so this monument can be seen as representative of much of Canterbury’s early history. From here we will move onto the Roman Museum where we will examine the remains of a rich Roman house, including its mosaics, and discuss Roman domestic life amongst the elites. Depending on time and on your interests we may take the short walk to the church of St. Mary Northgate where the remains of the Roman wall of the town, almost at its full height, can still be seen in its north wall. We then walk along the route of the Roman wall and soon arrive at the church of St. Martin, whose site marks the beginning of English Christianity in the late sixth century. We will look at the history of the church and its importance. After this we may have a pint and possibly some food at the fourteenth century pub Simple Simon’s, where, if possible, we can see the medieval rear of the building, which can enlighten us as to the appearance of much of the typical buildings of the period. We could then move onto Eastbridge Hospital which was built in 1176 in response to the huge influx of pilgrims now arriving to see the shrine of Thomas Becket. A stone throw away is the thirteenth century Blackfriars. The remains visible today are all that remains of a much larger friary that was situated on an island in the middle of the Stour River which runs though Canterbury. The Blackfriars, the Dominican order of monks, was one of three orders who settled here in the medieval period, the others being the Greyfriars and Whitefriars, the Franciscan and Carmelite orders respectively. It is to the latter we now go, where a recent archaeological dig has brought to light much of the history of Canterbury and this will be briefly discussed. From there the culmination of our walk will take us to the famous, largely eleventh and twelfth century, Cathedral where we will examine the location of the Archbishop Thomas Becket’s murder and later shrine. This was the focus for all the pilgrims arriving in the city and the inspiration for Chaucer’s ‘A Pilgrim’s Tale’. The importance of the shrine and its appearance, it was destroyed as part of the Reformation, will be discussed, and will be the end-point of our walk

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