Canterbury

Canterbury seems like the ideal small English village, but there are a couple of flies in the ointment.

I went there on Thursday on another gorgeous day in the UK.  Seventy-five degrees, sunshine.  I was actually hot a lot of the time.  Thank God I had my sun screen.

This is what you first see when you arrive at the Canterbury East train station.

Now that's a walled city.  Though it turns out the walls were built in the 1600s on Roman foundations.  From here, I went through some very commercial streets and came upon Mercer Lane.

What you see down that street is the gate to the Canterbury Cathedral.  The figure in the middle looks at first like the devil warning you not to enter unless you are free of sin.  But that actually is a statue of Jesus, and a modern one at that.  1992! It was replaced after three hundred years during which that spot on the gate was empty.  The original statue was destroyed  by King Henry VIII.

Canterbury is in Kent, southeast of London.  When St. Augustine first went to England to convert the population to Christianity, he landed in Kent and went to see the King of Kent near Canterbury.  He was apparently a very persuasive fellow and soon the king was a Christian.  Not only that, the king offered Augustine land for a church.  (All this was in the 6th Century.)  Augustine was supposed to establish a church in London, but after corresponding with the Pope, he was told to take Kent's offer and found the church in Canterbury, which of course, he did.  This is the third cathedral, I seem to remember, on the site.  Since then, Canterbury has been the seat of the Catholic and then Anglican Church in England.

Centuries later, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in the cathedral by some knights in the service of Henry II.  The church soon became the destination for pilgrims who prayed to Thomas for miracles.  The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, are about some of these pilgrims and mention places still existing in the city.

But in the 16th Century, King Henry VIII, who broke from the Pope and the Catholic Church, destroyed what was the shrine to Thomas in the cathedral and the pilgrimages stopped, leaving the city in quite a spot.  Canterbury lost half of its population in the next five years.  In the church now is just a candle where the shrine used to be.

Henry also destroyed the monastery founded by Augustine.

Quite a bastard, that Henry.  By the way, Britains remember the wives of Henry VIII this way...."divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."  That is: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, Katherine Parr.

There are loads of buildings in Canterbury that are very old, and many others that just look it.

This house is from the late 1400's though it has been redone in every style since then.  At one time, Queen Elizabeth I celebrated her birthday there.

This is a stone house from the 1300's with a facade added in the 1500s.

The fellow in the last picture is Peter, the guide to my tour of Canterbury.  A very erudite and lovely man.

The place is filled with stone churches.

And even some connections to the US.  In this building, a contract was signed by some Protestants and a Dutch company for the lease of a vessel called the Mayflower.

Pisa has its leaning tower, and Canterbury, its leaning building, old enough for Charles Dickens to have written about it.

There is a quote written above the door from Dickens: "a very old house, bulging over the road...leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement  below..."

But like a lot of old English towns, Canterbury is marred by modern elements, in my opinion.  For instance, here, next to the cathedral gate, is a Starbucks.

And down one lovely street is a monstrosity of a new building.

That's actually the new Marlowe theater.  Christopher Marlowe, a great playwright and a contemporary of Shakespeare (and often said to have written many of his plays), was born in Canterbury.  It looks to me like the city hopes to become to Marlowe what Stratford is to Shakespeare and make the Marlowe Theatre like the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Despite these concerns on my part, I thought Canterbury was lovely, especially along the Stour River.  You can take leisurely trips on the river (which I did not do)......

Or have a glass of wine in a cafe along the river (which I did do).....

Another interesting fact about Canterbury.... It is home to at least two massive universities and one public (i.e. private) school, The Kings School.  Altogether, there are 30,000 students in Canterbury and only 40,000 permanent residents.  And the place is often overrun by students from other countries.  I felt like Methuselah walking around the town.

Despite the youth-orientation, the place appears to close up at 5PM, when all the attractions close.  It becomes almost a ghost town, at least in city centre.  My guess is it wakes up again about 10PM when the students become active.

On my way out to the station, I happened upon this Norman castle.

Seriously, the place has everything!