Modern Britain

The main entrance to the cathedral grounds is the Christchurch Gate, which was built between 1517-1521, barely twenty years before the monastery was dissolved.  The splendid timber doors beneath the gatehouse date from the restoration period. and bear the arms of Archbishop Juxon (1660-1663).

The western entrance is to the left, with the south porch visible in the lower centre right. This building is entirely Norman, the original Augustinian church and its later Saxon cathedral replacement having been damaged and then swept away when it was sacked by the Danes in 1011 and then ravaged beyond repair by a great fire which swept through the city in 1067.

A close-up of the windows and roof-mounted cross over the western entrance. The stone for all parts of the Norman cathedral was brought from Caen in Northern France and shipped via Sandwich and up the River Stour to Fordwich, which was Canterbury's main port.

The inner grass square of the cloisters, on the northern side of the cathedral, are reached by heading left from the western entrance. The great windows of the Chapter House to the east looks down over these Perpendicular arches and lierne vaulting which form the Great Cloister, begun in 1396. It seems that this kind of enclosed precinct had its origins in the Saxon 'inner burgh' or fortified area.

The cloisters are covered passages around the central courtyard which were used by the black-robed Benedictine monks who lived at the cathedral until the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536-1541. Canterbury's monastery was dissolved in 1540.

Various memorial plaques line the cloister walls, some of which are very old. This one dates to 1673 and reads, 'Neare unto this lieth interred the body of Simon Man who was one of the vestrys of this church who died [by?] 16th of November 1673, aged 71'.

Beyond the library and the water tower are the gardens with ruins of the Monks Dormitory. During the Dissolution they were destroyed and provision was made for the former members as long as they accepted Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England. The open site now houses the Healing Garden and Herbarium.

Ruins covering the view of the Trinity chapel at the far end of the cathedral. Once the monastery had been suppressed, responsibility for the services in the cathedral and the upkeep of the many buildings within the cathedral grounds was given to a group of clergy known as the Dean and Chapter.

Typically robust wooden carvings on a building within the cathedral grounds display the English habit of decorative woodwork and stone masonry.

Recording contributed by Herbert Boland.