Canterbury Cathedral: A Pilgrims' Goal

On any scale, Canterbury Cathedral is one of the most important churches and one of the most important ancient buildings in England.

Its Archbishop is head of the Church of England; its shrine to the martyred St Thomas Becket was the goal of the pilgrims chronicled in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; it is the scene of T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, warning against rising fascism in the 1930s, and it is a World Heritage site and one of the oldest active churches in England.

Clearly not a place we could, or would want to skip when we revisited Canterbury this past summer!

Unlike some cathedral that are surrounded by ordinary buildings, or others that face large open plazas, you come to this one through an arched opening into its own neighborhood, the Cathedral Close, with a small row of buildings facing a large open space and the cathedral itself. If felt like a transition in time.

Inside, the church shows the signs of its long life, with elements of many different styles. Originally built as a much smaller building at the end of the 6th century, it was completely rebuilt in mainly Norman style shortly after the victory of William the Conqueror.

A fire in 1174 caused considerable damage, leading to a new appearance as rebuilding took on Gothic styles. The church was also expanded quite a bit at that point: only four years after St Thomas was murdered after his dispute with the king, thousands of pilgrims were arriving to worship at the spot.

Most of the remaining Normal portions were destroyed or disguised in late 14th century rebuilding, although guides and docents in the Cathedral can point out where there are remains to be seen.

St Thomas's tomb is a story all its own. The candle seen in the picture at the top marks the spot where four knights attacked and killed him in 1170. In the beginning, the monks of the abbey buried him under the floor to hide his body from the king; they feared it would be stolen to prevent veneration.

Within a few years, he had been canonized, the king had apologized, and a series of increasingly ornate tombs were built as a shrine in the Trinity Chapel. You won't see them today: After nearly 400 years, he remained so potent a symbol of church resistance to royal authority that when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, he also had Thomas' shrine destroyed and his bones crushed to dust and scattered. Eventually, the spot came to be marked with the candle.

Thomas is not the only one buried in the Cathedral; most graveyards don't have as many burials as this Cathedral, including kings, knights, bishops, various nobles and their families. As you walk, you'll see lots of carvings of lords and ladies in their armor or fancy dress lying above tombs, as well as dozens of bishops. Only occasionally does one seem almost natural, as above.

But beyond the tombs, there are walls of plaques for those buried or honored here; Canterbury was an important garrison town from the 18th century into the 20th, and many of the plaques represent military families and Britain's wars. Some are quite long-winded...and others a bit lacking in detail.