The Ham Nomads

30 Oct 2015. <GB-ENG> Canterbury, & Farthing Common, East Kent —

Another destination for today — Canterbury, with two 'must-see' sites. The first was St Augustine's Abbey, one of the oldest monastic sites in Britain, and the second was Canterbury Cathedral, the site of the murder of Thomas Beckett, and ever since then a destination for pilgrimage in Britain, the destination, for example, of the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, one of the classics of English literature.

St Augustine's Abbey is a sad site. The original church built by Augustine in 598 was destroyed by the Normans to be recreated as a Norman Benedictine abbey, but in 1538 — remember 1538? — the magnificent church was demolished by the henchmen of Henry VIII as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry did at least use part of the property as a royal palace, and Anne of Cleves spent some time here on her way to become his fourth wife.

But after this, the place slowly fell into decline, until A.J. Beresford Hope bought the site in 1844. He restored many of the medieval buildings, and a missionary school was set up in the renewed buildings. He was also responsible in setting up the St Augustine's Foundation to enable excavation and preservation of the ruins — after all, this was one of the most important sites in the history of the Christian Church in Britain.

This site, St Martin's Church and Canterbury Cathedral, were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989.
 

From the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey, we then made our way to the far-from-ruined Canterbury Cathedral. It is not for nothing that the highest Archbishop in the Church of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who claims a direct line of authority back to St Augustine himself, the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the crypt of the Cathedral — no photography, unfortunately — is the site of the original tomb of Thomas Becket. And upstairs, in the middle of Trinity Chapel (where you would usually find the apse) burns a candle — the sign near it says 'The candle burns where the SHRINE of St. THOMAS of CANTERBURY stood from 1220 to 1538 when it was destroyed by order of King Henry VIII'. Remember Dover Castle? This was used as a staging point for foreign dignitaries on their pilgrimages to Canterbury. And it was in Dover Castle that Thomas Becket had his own chapel. English Heritage have set up the Great Tower of Dover Castle as it would have been in the time of Henry II as he welcomed eminent pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.

Some of the newer windows show
an almost Disney style in the faces

We walked back to where we had parked the van on the roadside not far up from St Ausgustine's Abbey. Where to go for the night? It was already dark, and we didn't want to be searching for a stop in such conditions. And then we realised that our old haunt Farthing Common was only 14 miles away! Guess where we spent the night! (No prizes!)

Distance driven — today, 34 miles ( 55 km ); to date, 30,315 miles ( 48,788 km )