26 May 2016 - Canterbury Club Site, Kent

This morning dawned clear and almost warm; we were pleased to set off into Canterbury on foot, a half hour’s walk mostly downhill. We entered the town through Burgate, one of the seven Roman gates of Durovernum Cantiacorum, the Roman name for this city back in the day. This, the gate, was probably constructed around AD 270 – 90 as the point of entry of the Roman road from Richborough, one of the principal Roman gates to the city. During road works in 1988 the metalling of the Roman road, which predated the construction of the defences, was uncovered.

So much ongoing work

We wandered on into the town, still quiet at this early hour, and found our way through to the Information Centre housed in the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, also known as the Royal Museum and Art Gallery, a rather grand building, the construction completed in 1899, financed by a bequest of the Hon. J C Beaney (1828 – 1891) of Melbourne, Australia. That we found quite fascinating, and even more so when we later discovered a plaque in the Cathedral in the memory of this Canterbury born Australian.

On entering the building we found ourselves in a couple of galleries on the ground floor. The Garden Room is dedicated to works by Thomas Sidney Cooper (1703 – 1902), born in Canterbury most famous for his pictures of cattle.  The collection is of national importance and spans the full range of his work, from his early prints and drawings through to his last oil, painted at the age of ninety nine, shortly before his death.

The second galley had an excellent exhibition of East Kent printmakers, highlighting the works of Ben Sands, whose works was particularly pleasing. This was all a bonus on the way through to buy tickets for a walking tour to be taken later in the day.

With several hours still free, we made our way to the cathedral and spent about an hour and a half wandering about both the exterior and the interior of this amazing structure.

This, the Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s Church, the latter two to be visited later in the day, represent the introduction of Christianity to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. The Cathedral was founded in 602 by a Benedictine monk Saint Augustine. Then, as mentioned in an earlier blog, in 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the Cathedral and ever since the cathedral has attracted thousands of pilgrims. 

Today there were great crowds of French school children visiting the abbey, as well as others like ourselves. About five million tourists visit Canterbury every year, and of those about one and a half million visit the Cathedral, one million of those being school children. You may wonder, as I did, that it seems such a small proportion of the visitors, apart from the children on tour,  who check out the cathedral. Entry to the Cathedral costs £12 per head, so many pass it up and make do with popping into one of the many museums or do the walking tour which costs £7.50 a head. We splashed out doing both and certainly had no regrets, but it does seem odd to pay to enter a church which would have you embrace its faith. 

However the public relations people in the cathedral have all bases covered; several interpretative panels explain the day to day costs and all sorts of other information that make you feel more gracious as regards the tariff. 

River Stour by Westgate Gardens

Another branch of the River Stour

Mercery Lane

About 330 paid staff (many part-time) work in and around the Cathedral, as well as about 600 volunteers. 31% of the income comes from donations and grants (including lotto grants which I thought rather odd given the religious nature of “the business”), 39% from visitor admissions and events and the remainder from property and investments, trading, accommodation at the Cathedral Lodge and other sources. On the other side of the coin, major repairs and restoration, general upkeep and maintenance cost nearly £10,000 a day, and much of this was evident today. In fact much of the exterior looks like a construction site. This very grand old structure is decaying, having stood and endured for so long. Chris, who has seen many old buildings during his life, reckons he has never seen one so hell bent on collapse. The twenty stonemasons, specialist carpenters, plumbers and other conservators who are employed by the Cathedral certainly have their work cut out.

We were both extremely impressed with this magnificent cathedral and considered it superior to anything seen before. The walking tour passed through the grounds and gave us further insight into its workings and history and we were delighted with our day. We learned here that the many superb ancient lead light windows were saved from destruction during the Blitz by being removed from the window frames and buried under quantities of dirt.  And that faithful parishioners stood on the Cathedral roof during the same period hurling incendiary bombs away with spades before they were able to set fire to the building.

A rather crooked house

This same tour took us through the old town, round the narrow streets and lanes, all lined with picturesque and ancient buildings, several dating back to the 1400 and 1500s. We were a small group of just eight, and all greatly entertained by the elderly gentleman guide. It was he who explained that these days, with no industry in the area apart from agricultural activities, all part of the “Garden of Kent’, Canterbury survives on tourism and education; there are three universities in the town and several public (Antipodeans read “private”) schools.  It was also he who took much of the history for which Canterbury is famous with a degree of scepticism and prefixed much of what he said with “it is said that …”

We walked on up High Street to the Westgate, this built about 1380 on the site of a Roman gate, one of the finest surviving medieval gateways in Britain and one of the first major fortifications to incorporate facilities for guns. Though built against the French during the Hundred Years’ War, the gate was used as the city prison until 1829. We passed underneath it and made our way along the banks of the River Stour through lovely flower festooned gardens, full of folk enjoying the bonus sunshine.

Although not as numerous as those in Cambridge, there were several young men touting for business on the river; punts awaited our convenience and currency. The River Stour interestingly passes through the town in a couple of places, forming an island. The swifter anabranch flows past the Westgate while a more ponderous branch passes through canal lined with the quaintest of buildings. I saw no takers in this cold day upon the river, although the booking boards were made to suggest otherwise. Perhaps the coming Bank Holiday will bring better custom.

Heading back toward camp on foot late in the afternoon, we called into the ruins of the Augustine Abbey, this administered by English Heritage, and so free for us to enter. This is one of the oldest and most important monastic sites in England. Alas it fell victim to Henry VIII’s rampage of destruction when came the years of the Dissolution, although he did later build a royal palace here, reusing some of the abbey buildings.

Ruins of St Augustine's Abbey

  In the early part of the 1800s, the ruins were rescued from oblivion by Alexander James Beresford Hope who happened to hear about the site, bought it for a song, and founded a missionary college here in 1848, considering this rather apt given its history. Today, the Abbey forms part of the World Heritage Site that includes the Cathedral and St Martin’s Church just a little further up the road where we called next.

St Martin's Church

This rather unattractive building, at least judging by the exterior, was originally built in Roman times, but has evolved through the centuries. It is now the oldest continuous functioning parish church in Britain, having served the faithful for 1400 years. Alas the big old doors were bolted shut although we were invited to attend services as listed on the board outside. More exciting were the number of grey squirrels scampering about and over the crowded headstones in the church yard; such a delightful sight!

And so after such another full day, we continued our walk uphill to the camp, and revived with cups of coffee and bare feet propped up on the couch, before contemplating preparation of dinner and our itinerary for tomorrow.