THE CITY
A walled city generally holds more easily that elusive quality of
romance for which the intelligent mind so often hungers than a town
that has long ago discarded its old tower-studded girdle. And among
the half-dozen or more English towns still possessed of their old
mural defences Canterbury holds a high place, because within its walls
there are still, in spite of railways and motors and the horrors of
twentieth-century advertising, a hundred byways and nooks where the
atmosphere of Elizabethan and pre-Reformation England still lurks. The
wall itself does not stand out with the splendid completeness of York
or Conway, and on the western side it has vanished altogether, while
of the seven or eight gates, one only--the West Gate--has been saved;
yet, while walking in the narrow, picturesque streets, it is difficult
to forget that Canterbury is a walled city. Until well into last
century all the gates were standing; but one by one these ornaments
were destroyed by the city until one only was left, and even that
would have been wantonly sacrificed to facilitate the entry of some
circus caravans when, in 1850, Wombwell's menagerie visited the city!
This vandal showman actually dared to request the Corporation to
demolish the gate on account of the difficulty of getting his
procession through the low arch. This is hard to believe, but it is
infinitely more difficult to understand the aboriginal minds of some
of the members of the Corporation when the records unblushingly reveal
that the showman's preposterous request not only found both a proposer
and a seconder, but that the votes were equally divided on the matter,
and it was only the Mayor's casting vote which has preserved for the
city its noble entry. Such a searchlight as this, throwing into
dazzling clearness the almost entire lack of appreciation for its
historic buildings possessed by the controllers of the city must make
one grateful for the happy chances which have permitted so much that
is old and picturesque to survive.
[Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, FROM WITHIN.
This is the only survivor of the gates which studded the mediæval
walls of the city.]
From the East Station there extends as far as the site of the old
Riding Gate a well-preserved length of the wall with semicircular
towers at intervals, and from opposite Lady Wootton's Green to St.
Mary's Church, standing close to the site of North Gate, lengths of
the wall, with a tower at intervals, form thrillingly medieval
foregrounds for the Cathedral towers. In Pound Lane the wall continues
in a furtive and rather desultory fashion until it ends at the West
Gate. Opposite Lady Wootton's Green there still remain indications of
a narrow postern, which is generally accepted as that through which
Queen Bertha was wont to pass on her way to her devotions at St.
Martin's Church. This, however, presupposes that the portion of the
wall immediately surrounding this particular point is Roman or very
Early Saxon, and also that the walls of the city occupied the same
position, at least as far as this point, as those built at the end of
the twelfth century.
Mr. T. Godfrey Faussett's plan of Roman Canterbury appears to carry
the wall just as far as this point, and then turns at an acute angle
towards the south side of the Cathedral. Following the direction Queen
Bertha would have taken brings one to the great gateway of St.
Augustine's Abbey, the Benedictine monastery founded by Augustine on
the land given for that purpose by Ethelbert. It was at first
dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and the original buildings were
finished in 613. Having become the place of burial for the Kings of
Kent and the Archbishops, the Abbey quite overshadowed the Priory of
Christ Church, until in 758 Archbishop Cuthbert was secretly buried
within the claustral confines of his own priory. At the Dissolution
Henry converted the stately buildings into a palace, so that the royal
visits, which had been of no infrequent occurrence in the days of
monastic hospitality, continued; and while the lordly pile passed
through the hands of various owners, Elizabeth, Charles I., and
Charles II. paid visits on various occasions.
A century ago, when appreciation of the architecture of the dead
centuries when Englishmen built with superlative skill had ebbed to
its lowest, the Abbey had sunk to inconceivably debased uses. The
monastic kitchen had been converted into a public-house, and the great
gateway--the finest structural relic of the Abbey--had become the
entrance to a brewery, while cock-fighting took place in the state
bedroom above. The pilgrims' guest hall, now the college dining-hall,
had become a dancing-hall, and the ground, unoccupied by buildings,
soil hallowed by the memories of so many saintly lives and associated
with the momentous days when England was being released from the toils
of pagan ignorance became known as "the Old Palace Tea-gardens." The
popular mind had seemingly forgotten the original uses of the place
they were desecrating with fireworks and variety shows.
At last, in 1844, Mr. Beresford Hope rescued the half-destroyed
remnants of the abbey-palace, and through his generosity the present
missionary college was founded, and the buildings restored or
reconstructed. A more happy idea could scarcely have been suggested
than that of associating the abbey founded by the first missionary of
Christianity to England with modern efforts to carry the light into
the dark places of the earth. The much-restored gateway, built by
Abbot Fyndon at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the
guest-hall, and part of the memorial chapel, are the chief portions of
the old structures incorporated into the buildings that surround three
sides of the college quadrangle. Standing apart to the south is one of
the huge walls of the nave of the abbey church, and to the east are
the extensive excavations of the east end of the crypt and other
fascinatingly early remains of the historic churches mentioned in an
earlier chapter (p. 17).
Leaving the Abbey grounds, and continuing to the east, one reaches in
a few minutes the little church of St. Martin set on the knoll to
which Queen Bertha directed her steps. It is, however, a
disappointingly familiar type of Early English village church to the
casual glance, and until the fabric and the remarkable font have been
examined and discussed in the light of modern scientific archæology it
is difficult to appreciate the hoary antiquity of at least parts of
the structure. To understand the indications of the Saxon, or possibly
Roman, work in the fabric, and to know the reasons for considering the
font a relic of Saxon times, it is scarcely possible to find a better
instructor than Canon Routledge, whose little book is all one can
desire.
When the Cathedral, the Abbey, and St. Martin's Church have been
visited, it is too often thought that Canterbury has yielded up all
her treasures, but this is an amazingly mistaken idea. There still
remain to be seen the Castle, the walls, the old inns, the many
interesting examples of early domestic architecture, the remains of
the lesser religious houses and hospitals, a wonderful array of
interesting churches, and the excellent museum. Of the Castle the
great Norman keep, completed about 1125, still stands, having been
allowed to remain because the walls were found to be too hard to
easily destroy; but up to the time of writing the Corporation has not
purchased the immense shell, and it therefore remains a storage place
for the coal of the adjoining gasworks. The remains of the buildings
of the Black, or Preaching, Friars, and those of the Grey Friars, who
belonged to the rule of St. Francis, are on islands formed by the
Stour, and are marked in nearly every plan of the town. The hospitals
include that of St. John the Baptist in North Gate Street, Eastbridge
Hospital in St. Peter Street, and the Poor Priests' Hospital near
Stour Street. Outside the city, at Harbledown, is the interesting old
Hospital of St. Nicholas, a home for lepers, who were separately
housed.
Of the churches it would be easy to write a great deal, but there is
merely space to point out that the only one lacking in interest is All
Saints' in High Street. At St. Dunstan's the head of Sir Thomas More
is preserved in a vault, but it is never possible to see it, and one
must be content with the picturesque brick gateway of the Roper house
in St. Dunstan's Street.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CANTERBURY CASTLE.
KEY TO NUMBERS.
1. Door to Cloisters.
2. Door In Cloisters.
3. Dean's (or Lady) Chapel.
4. St. Michael's Chapel.
5. Baptistery.
6. Library (Howleian).
7. Treasury.
8. Chapel of King Henry IV.
9. Arundel Tower (N.W.).
10. Dunstan Tower (S.W.).
11. Entrance to French Church.
12. Archbishop Benson.
13. Bishop Parry.
14. Archbishop Sumner.
15. Sir T. Hales.
16. Colonel Stuart.
17. Dr. Beaney.
18. Dean Fotherbye.
19. Archbishop Chicheley.
20. Archbishop Bourchier.
21. Archbishop Kemp.
22. Archbishop Sudbury.
23. St. Dunstan (site).
24. Archbishop Tait.
25. King Henry IV.
26. Edward, the Black Prince.
27. Becket's Shrine (site).
28. Cardinal Pole.
29. Unknown.
30. Archbishop Mepham.
31. Archbishop Winchelsey.
32. Henry de Estria.
33. Stephen Langton.
34. Archbishop's ancient Chair.
35. Memorial to Dean Farrar.
36. Wm. Broughton, Bishop of Sydney and Adelaide.
37. Archbishop Boyes.
38. Tomb of Dean Farrar.
39. Tomb of Archbishop Temple.
40. Two columns from Reculver.]
INDEX
Alphege, Archbishop, 19, 20
Angel Steeple, 42, 44, 48
Anglo-Saxon invasions, 12
Archbishop's Palace, 42, 45
Augustine, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 54, 59
Becket, Thomas à, 5, 6, 23-28, 43, 47, 49, 52, 54
Bertha (Ethelbert's Queen), 13, 14, 16, 58, 61
Black Prince, 53, 54, 55
Boyes, Archbishop, 49
Bret, Richard le, 29
Broughton, Bishop, 49
Cæsar, Julius, 10
Canute, 20
Castle, the, 62
Cathedral, the, 40-55
Charles I., 59
Charles II., 59
Chartres, windows at, 55
Chillenden, Prior, 38, 46, 47, 48
Clarence, Thomas, Duke of, 50
Conrad's choir, 34
Conrad, Prior, 22, 51, 52
Corbeuil, Archbishop de, 22
Cuthbert, Archbishop, 59
Dane John, the, 10
Danes, the, 19, 20
David I. of Scotland, 22
Dover, 11
Eadbald, 18
Eadmer, 21
Elizabeth, Queen, 39, 59
Ernulph, Prior, 22
Estria, Prior, 46
Ethelbert, 13, 14, 17, 18, 59
Farrar, Dean, 49
Fitzurse, Reginald, 25, 26
Foliot, Gilbert, 33
Fyndon, Abbot, 60
Gates of Canterbury, the, 56-58
Gibbons, Orlando, 49
Goldstone II., Prior, 48
Hales, Sir T., tomb of, 49
Harbledown, 8, 32, 62
Hengist and Horsa, 13
Henry I., 22
Henry II., 23, 34, 40, 55
Henry III., 37
Henry IV., tomb of, 53
Henry VIII., 5, 43, 47, 59
Holland, Lady Margaret, 50
Hospitals, medieval, 62
Howley, Archbishop, 50
Huguenot Chapel, 55
Joan of Navarre, 53
John, King, 50
King's school, the, 45, 49
Lady Wootton's Green, 58
Lanfranc, Archbishop, 21, 22, 38, 43
Langton, Stephen, 50
Living, Archbishop, 20
Luidhard, Bishop, 13
Lymne, 11
Magna Charta, 50
Mercery Lane, 41
Molashe, Prior, 38, 42
More, Sir Thomas, 62
Moreville, Hugh de, 27
Norman staircase, 45
Pilgrims' Way, the, 6, 32, 34
Prior's Gate, 44, 45
Reculver, 2, 46
Reform Bill, the, 50, 51
Religious houses, 62
Richborough, 11
Roman Canterbury, 10-12, 16, 58, 61
St. Augustine's Abbey, 11, 14, 19, 31, 58-60
St. Dunstan, Church of, 19, 32, 40, 62
St. Martin, Church of, 14, 16, 17, 19, 41, 58
St. Mildred, Church of, 19
St. Pancras, Church of, 17, 19
Salisbury, John of, 26
Sandwich, 23
Selling, Prior, 38
Somerset, John Beaufort, Earl of, 50
Stanley, Dean, 23, 24, 30
Sumner, Archbishop, 49
Thorn, William, 17
Tracy, William de, 25
Walls of the city, 56-59
Warrior's Chapel, the, 50
West gate, the, 56-57
William of Sens, 35, 51
William Rufus, 22
William the Englishman, 35