Canterbury, Kent, England

One of the oldest and most famous Christian buildings in England is the Canterbury Cathedral. It is the Cathedral of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of all England and leader of the Church of England.

The Cathedral's first Archbishop was St. Augustine, previously Abbott of St. Andrew's Benedictine Abbey in Rome, he was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great, arriving in 597 AD. In Canterbury, St. Augustine established a thriving Catholic monastery which was later dismantled under the Dissolution of the Monasteries instituted by King Henry VIII.

St. Bede the Venerable (History of the English Church and People) records how the Cathedral was founded by St. Augustine, the first Archbishop. Archaeological investigations under the Nave floor in 1993 revealed the remains of this first Saxon Cathedral which had been built across a former Roman road by way of foundations.

The main phases of building:

Early building perhaps with a Roman core and dedicated to St. Saviour, to be associated with Augustine.

Second building on same axis added by Abp. Cuthbert (740-60) added as a baptistry and dedicated to St. John the Baptist.

Oda (941-58) renewed the building greatly lengthening the Nave.

Lyfing (1013-20) and Aethelnoth (1020-1038) added a western apse as an oratory of St. Mary.

St. Anselm greatly extended the Quire to the east to give sufficient space for the monks of the greatly revived monastery. The crypt of this church survives as the largest of its kind in England.

Following the disastrous fire of 1174 which destroyed the Eastern end, Guilliaume de Sens rebuilt the Quire and later William the Englishman added the immense Trinity Chapel as a shrine church for the relics of St. Thomas the Martyr, that is Thomas Becket.

Prior Thomas Chillenden (1390-1410) rebuilt the Nave in the Perpendicular style of English Gothic. ca. 1430 the short central tower was demolished and rebuilt at a height of 297 feet.

Thomas Becket was murdered in the cathedral on Tuesday, 29 December 1170. He was the second of four archbishops murdered. Canterbury Cathedral is the burial place of King Henry IV and of Edward the Black Prince.

It ceased to be an abbey during the Dissolution of the Monasteries when all religious houses were suppressed. Canterbury surrendered in March 1539, the last abbey to do so and reverted to its previous status of 'a college of secular canons'.

The buildings at Canterbury form separate groups. The church forms the nucleus. In immediate contact with this, on the north side, lie the cloister and the group of buildings devoted to the monastic life. Outside of these, to the west and east, are the halls and chambers devoted to the exercise of hospitality, with which every monastery was provided, for the purpose of receiving as guests persons who visited it, whether clergy or laity, travelers, pilgrims or paupers.

To the north a large open court divides the monastic from the menial buildings, intentionally placed as remote as possible from the conventual buildings proper, the stables, granaries, barn, bakehouse, brewhouse, laundries, etc., inhabited by the lay servants of the establishment.

The most important group of buildings is naturally that devoted to monastic life. This includes two Cloisters, the great cloister surrounded by the buildings essentially connected with the daily life of the monks,---the church to the south, the refectory or frater-house here as always on the side opposite to the church, and farthest removed from it, that no sound or smell of eating might penetrate its sacred precincts, to the east the dormitory, raised on a vaulted undercroft, and the chapter-house adjacent, and the lodgings of the cellarer to the west. To this officer was committed the provision of the monks' daily food, as well as that of the guests. He was, therefore, appropriately lodged in the immediate vicinity of the refectory and kitchen, and close to the guest-hall. A passage under the dormitory leads eastwards to the smaller or infirmary cloister, appropriated to the sick and infirm monks.

Eastward of this cloister extend the hall and chapel of the infirmary, resembling in form and arrangement the nave and chancel of an aisled church. Beneath the dormitory, looking out into the green court or herbarium, lies the "pisalis" or "calefactory," the common room of the monks. At its north-east corner access was given from the dormitory to the necessarium, a portentous edifice in the form of a Norman hall, 145 ft. long by 25 broad, containing fifty-five seats. It was, in common with all such offices in ancient monasteries, constructed with the most careful regard to cleanliness and health, a stream of water running through it from end to end.

A second smaller dormitory runs from east to west for the accommodation of the conventual officers, who were bound to sleep in the dormitory. Close to the refectory, but outside the cloisters, are the domestic offices connected with it: to the north, the kitchen, 47 ft. square, surmounted by a lofty pyramidal roof, and the kitchen court; to the west, the butteries, pantries, &c. The infirmary had a small kitchen of its own. Opposite the refectory door in the cloister are two lavatories, an invariable adjunct to a monastic dining-hall, at which the monks washed before and after taking food.

The buildings devoted to hospitality were divided into three groups. The prior's group "entered at the south-east angle of the green court, placed near the most sacred part of the cathedral, as befitting the distinguished ecclesiastics or nobility who were assigned to him." The cellarer's buildings were near the west end of the nave, in which ordinary visitors of the middle class were hospitably entertained. The inferior pilgrims and paupers were relegated to the north hall or almonry, just within the gate, as far as possible from the other two.

(Information from Wikipedia.com - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Cathedral)

Cathedral #1: The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. This photograph of the work is also in the public domain in the United States.

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