Canterbury: The Guide's Tale

The Roman town of Durovernum was founded in 43AD, and the few relics that remain from this time include the burial mound at Dane John, the foundations of the bathhouse in the cellar of Waterstone’s, and the magnificent mosaic at the Roman Museum in Butchery Lane.

King Ethelbert of Kent (r.561-617) adopted Cantwarabyrig as his new capital. When St Augustine arrived in 597, Ethelbert became one of his first converts to Christianity and provided land for the foundation of an abbey and its minster. This survived Viking raids of 839, 850, and most devastatingly, 1011, when the Prior betrayed the town by setting fire to the defenses and Archbishop Elphage offered his own life in return for those of the children. Of the 8,000 inhabitants, only 800 survived; the rest were murdered or sold into slavery. In 1070 Archbishop Lanfranc arrived in Canterbury to discover that the minster had burnt down in 1067, he immediately set about on the reconstruction, completed 1077. The other construction that survives from this time is the mighty castle. Beginning around 1100, it was one of the first stone keeps in the country and remains the fifth largest to this day.

In 1170 Archbishop Thomas á Beckett was martyred and later elevated to sainthood, as the pilgrims started to pour in and the tourist industry was born. The following centuries saw mixed fortunes, however. In 1216 the French Dauphin invaded and captured the castle, and in 1381, rebel leader Wat Tyler led his mob passed the incomplete city defenses and captured the castle. The defenses, including the magnificent West Gate, were completed by 1450, when they managed to turn back 4,000 Yorkists during the War of the Roses. This turn of fortunes was, however, short lived, and the city faced its most devastating blow in 1538, when King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. The city’s two abbeys were destroyed, and although the minster lived on as an independent cathedral, the shrine of St Thomas á Beckett was smashed to pieces and the pilgrimages ended.

The city saw further desecrations over the following centuries: by the puritans during the Civil War, by the Commission for Paving during the improvements of 18th and 19th centuries, and by the Nazis during the bombings of WWII, but now the city’s past seems secure, as the tourists return in droves.

Quick Tips:

The tourist information office next to the entrance to the cathedral can supply all the usual information on accommodation, restaurants, and attractions, as well as the usual array of brochures and souvenirs.

Best Way To Get Around:

The small town centre is surrounded by the medieval town walls and can easily be explored on foot without being troubled by traffic.

This is a popular commuter town that is well connected with London; National Express Coaches arrive and depart from the bus station on St George’s Lane, and there are trains from London Victoria at Canterbury West and trains from London Charing Cross at Canterbury West, both a short walk from the centre.

The official youth hostel is about one mile east of the city centre, housed in a curious, rambling three-story Victorian villa that is easy enough to get lost in, with its split levels and winding staircases.

Beds are in reasonably sized, four-person dorms, complete with a small writing table and chair, and cost a shocking £16 for members, with a £2 surcharge for non-members. Sheets and thin blankets are supplied, but be warned -- the heating system isn’t great, and the rooms can get a little chilly. Indeed, the hostel closes from early December until January. The price seems high, even though it does include a reasonable breakfast, served from 8am until 9am in the dining room.

Reception is open from 7:30am until 10pm, although you can make reservations over the phone if you are arriving outside of these times. Check-out time is at 10am, while the hostel itself closes at 11pm sharp, although a late key for the front door can be rented from reception (while it is open) for those who aren’t quite ready to sleep at this time. Reception also sells all the usual backpacker requirements, including postcards, noodles, and ketchup.

The shower rooms are spread throughout the sprawling building, and I was never quite able to count how many there were, but off season, when we were staying, there were always a few empty, and there were also separate boys’ and girls’ washrooms (in case your morning ablutions are just too revolting to perform in front of the opposite sex), and all these are kept reasonably clean.

There is a small, fully equipped kitchen, a laundry with a washer/dryer and ironing facilities, a lounge with satellite TV, pool table, library, board games, overpriced Internet access, and a day room, with outdoor games and basketballs for the newly installed hoop.

The building has a great deal of character, which is more than can be said for the staff, and this is your typical institutionalised youth hostel.

Despite its numerous literary connections, from Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) -- Elizabethan playwright, spy, and possible real Shakespeare -- to Mary Tourtel (1874-1948) -- illustrator of the sartorially challenged bear, Rupert -- no author has been more closely linked to the city than Geoffrey Chaucer (1335-1400), and yet there is no real evidence that he was ever even here.

The author, whose Canterbury Tales published in 1476 as the first book to be printed in English, was born in London as the son of a vintner and entered royal service as a page in the household of Prince Lionel, Earl of Ulster, the second son of Edward III (r.1327-77). He went to war in France in 1359, where he was captured at the Siege of Reims and ransomed for £16. After the war, Geoff married Philipa Roet, Lady in Waiting to Queen Philipa, later entering the king’s service himself, first as esquire but finally ascending to Clerk of the King’s Works.

In his spare time, Geoff translated classical works and dabbled in French poetry; his first major work, Book of the Duchess, eulogising the death of the Duchess of Lancaster, was completed in 1368. He began work on the Canterbury Tales in 1387, following the death of his wife, but it was not until his retirement from public service in 1392 that he dedicated himself to his magnum opus; even so, his plan for each of his 30 pilgrims to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on the return to London was left less than a quarter finished, with only 24 tales (many recycled from his earlier works). Nonetheless, his reputation was secured, and his burial in Westminster Abbey marked the inauguration of what would become Poet’s Corner.

The Canterbury Tales attempts to recreate the sights, sounds, and unfortunately, smells of his age, as we are lead by Geoff himself from the Tabard Inn in London all the way to a recreation of the Tomb of St. Thomas á Becket in Canterbury while mechanical puppets recount five of the tales. The Animatronic Knight’s Tale is a ponderous story of chivalry and love, the Animatronic Miller’s Tale is a bawdy story of an illicit affair, The Animatronic Wife of Bath’s Tale finally tells the men in the audience what women really want, The Animatronic Nun’s Priest’s Tale is an Aessopian fable of inexplicable morality involving chickens, and the Animatronic Pardoner’s Tale is a spine-tingler worthy of a Tales of the Unexpected episode. With the book and its interwoven debate left incomplete, it is left to the visitor to vote for their favourites of these tales as they exit to the gift shop.

The puppets’ performances are perhaps a little stiff and wooden, and the entrance fee of £5.50/£4.60 may seem a little exorbitant, but the recreation is curiously atmospheric, and the hour-long experience is doubtless more fun than plowing through 14th-century prose, although what Geoff would have thought, one can only imagine.

The first striking image you see of the town will doubtless be that of the imposing West Gate at the top of the High Street, on the way to Canterbury East Station on the northeast edge of the old town.

This was built by master mason Henry Yevele, who constructed the nave of the cathedral, at the behest of Archbishop Sudbury in the late 14th century but was completed too late to fend off the Peasant Rebellion led by Wat Tyler, which captured the town in 1381 before proceeding to London, where they caught up with Sudbury and had him beheaded at the Tower of London. The gate got its own taste of blood in 1659, when a mob tired of puritanical rule which had included the banning of Christmas rose up and hung the governor from one of the upper windows. The following year, Charles II rode through the gate on his way to his coronation at Westminster, where he reclaimed the crown from its puritanical usurpers. The gate was later used as the town gaol where numerous luminaries were held, including Robert Cushman, who chartered the Mayflower for its epoch-making voyage to the new world.

This gate was the only one of the original eight town gates to survive the demolitions undertaken by the Commission for Paving in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to improve the traffic flow through the city centre, and it is now home to the Westgate Museum (open Monday to Saturday, 11am to 12:30pm and 1:30 to 3:30pm; admission £1/50p), which contains a small but fascinating collection of arms and armoury deployed by the citizens of the city over the years. There are a couple of hands-on displays of replicas for the kids (and certain bored guides) to play around with, as well as the more standard display cases. There is also a Brass Rubbing Centre where, for a small fee, you can turn your hand to the curious British art of rubbing brasses. The Czech engineer took the opportunity to fulfil her lifelong dream of rubbing up a Viking with colourful results, but there are many other options, including one of the local icons, the Black Prince, to be found within the cathedral.

The museum is pretty standard fare, but the magnificent views from the crenulated battlements across the old town towards the cathedral itself make it more than worth the small entrance fee alone.

The city is justifiably renowned for the awe-inspiring Canterbury Cathedral that stands at the very heart of the town, but there is plenty more to explore.

Our tour begins outside the Tourist Information Centre on the Butter Market, opposite the main entrance to the cathedral, where the War Memorial marks an area that was heavily damaged during the dark days of the war. Searching for targets that would demoralise the British public, the Nazis turned to the Baedeker Guidebook and chose Canterbury, amongst other treasured sites, for aerial bombing. The so-called Baedeker Raids were devastating, and although the cathedral survived unscathed, the neighbouring parish was destroyed. Only the tower of St. Georges Church survives to tell the tale, and the surrounding buildings are post-war constructions.

At the bottom of Burgate, you will find one of the longest remnants of the city walls. Passing along this surviving section of the city walls, you will find the quaint Zoar Chapel, built into one of the bastions in 1845, and the Dane John Gardens, laid out in 1790 around the Roman burial mound. The walls stood up to an attack by 4,000 Yorkists during the War of the Roses in 1450 but eventually succumbed to the far more insidious Commission for Paving, which demolished most of the ancient defenses in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as part of measures for improving the flow of traffic through the city centre.

When construction began on Canterbury Castle around 1100, it was one of the first stone keeps in the country and remains the fifth largest to this day. Built by the Normans as part of their campaign to pacify their newly conquered land, ironically, it didn’t see action until 1216, when it faced another French invader. Even more ironically, the castle was surrendered to the Dauphin without a single shot being fired and was eventually put to use as a storage dump. The eight-feet-thick walls have crumbled into disrepair as the facing stones have been scavenged for building materials, and only a shell now remains.

The neighbouring St Mildred’s Church dates back to Saxon times and marks the foot of Stour Street. Head up past the Old Almshouses and the Poor Priests Hospital, now home to the Canterbury Heritage Museum, with exhibits on the history and culture of the town and its inhabitants from King Ethelbert of Kent to Rupert the Bear. Doglegging down Hawk’s Lane brings you out onto St. Margaret’s Street, where a 19th-century church is now home to the The Canterbury Tales audio-visual experience, before leading you onto the High Street.

Heading up the town’s main thoroughfare will take you past the fascinating Roman Museum, with its preserved in-situ floor mosaic, the half-timbered Beaney Institute, home to the Royal Museum & Art Gallery, with its uninspired exhibits of Victorian artworks, over the River Sour, where you can see the pilgrim’s hospice at Eastbridge Hospital and the picturesque Old Weavers’ Cottages, and on to the West Gate. Just off High Street on the Friars, you will find the Marlowe Theatre, named after Canterbury’s most famous literary son, Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright, spy, and potential real Shakespeare.

This leads onto Palace Street, where you will find the Tudor St. Alphege’s Priest’s House, with it array of hideous gargoyles, Conquest House, where the knights met in the Norman undercroft before proceeding to the cathedral to martyr Archbishop Thomas á Beckett, the photogenically twisted Sir John Boys’ House, and lastly, on the corner, Beaus Restaurant, formerly owned by Phillipe de la Noye, where in 1621 Robert Cushman chartered the Mayflower for the pilgrim fathers’ voyage to America. Cushman and Noye followed onboard the Fortune, where Noye’s descendent Franklin Delano Roosevelt would become President.

Turning back down Sun Street will bring you back onto the Butter Market outside the Tourist Information Office, where our tour began.