30 Years A World Heritage Star

Celebrating 30 years since it became Kent’s only World Heritage Site, Canterbury abounds with history, culture plus glorious shopping and places to eat and drink

- Caroline Read

HISTORY

Celebrating 30 years since it became Kent’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ancient cathedral city of Canterbury has so much history packed into its narrow streets that it’s hard to know where to start.

Long before the construction of its iconic cathedral, it was a small settlement inhabited by early Kentish tribes.

Captured in the first century AD by the invading Roman forces and turned into a fortified city, it was abandoned for a time after they left Britain.

Not until Augustine was dispatched to bring Christianity to our shores in 597 was it brought back to life, and as a Roman city located between London and the Dover, it was chosen as the site of Augustine’s new abbey and cathedral.

In the Middle Ages, the city would become world-famous. In 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by four of the King’s knights in front of the cathedral alter, having resisted arrest.

He was rapidly canonised by the church and venerated as a martyr, with pilgrims starting to travel from all over the Christian world to worship at his tomb. For hundreds of years Canterbury was the busiest, most visited place in England.

BEST BITS

After all these years, and despite the world being a very different place, Canterbury Cathedral is still the city’s top attraction. Founded in around 600AD, the building itself is more modern.

Like all our cathedrals it was built, demolished, rebuilt, damaged and built again over the centuries, with most of what we see today dating from just after the Norman Conquest.