CANTERBURY AND OTHER PLACES

We’ve just returned from an overnight visit to Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex. The highlight of this trip was the city of Canterbury and of course the cathedral there.
We had booked into a hotel ( the Pilgrim’s Rest) about five miles out of the city, in a village called Littlebourne and once checked in; we took the local bus to Canterbury. For the next few hours we strolled around the ancient streets (and through very modern shopping precincts) to the cathedral. You can see just so many of these places and we have, but Canterbury is very special. For a start it has been a place of Christian worship for 1700 years. Its square tower, known as the Bell Harry Tower, dominates the city, and once you enter the Christchurch Gate into the cathedral precinct, and then into the cathedral proper, you are met with this magnificent Gothic nave which is simply overwhelming in size and scale. Then of course there is the history of the place. Buried here are giant figures of English history, among them Edward the Black Prince, and the chapel of Edward the Confessor, and all of the Archbishops of Canterbury. There is a candle burning on the site of St Thomas a’ Becket’s murder. There are tombs of early Saxon and medieval saints such as St Anselm and St Theodore of Tarsus, who died in 690AD. We went down into the crypt which dates from the eleventh century. Photography is forbidden here, but I sneaked one without the flash. We could have spent many more hours (not to say days) here but we wanted to visit St Augustine’s Abbey or rather the ruins of the abbey which we only excavated in the 19th century. These are all that’s left of one of those places Henry the eighth knocked around a bit at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The place was actually founded by St Augustine in 598AD, and expanded during Norman Times. There are several Saxon kings buried here and when Henry destroyed the place it was all covered over and turned into garden’s for the pleasure of visiting royalty. Many of the walls are built from bricks originally made by the Romans. Our last visit was to the small church of St Martin’s. At first sight this is an unremarkable edifice, but it is in fact the oldest church in continuous use in Britain. This what the book says:
“The first mention of the Church is the statement by the Venerable Bede, written within 100 years of the death of St. Augustine. It reads: "There was on the East side of the City a Church dedicated in honour of St. Martin; built of old while the Romans were still inhabiting Britain." Bede does not state if it was used for Christian worship in Roman times, or if it was a pagan temple converted to Christian use at a later date.
The curtain of history is not again lifted until about the year 580. Ethelbert, the King of Kent, married Bertha, the daughter of Charbert, King of the Franks, who reigned in Paris. Bertha was a Christian and as Ethelbert was a heathen it was stipulated that Bertha be allowed to practice the Christian faith. Bertha was accompanied to England by her chaplain, Bishop Liudhard, and it was to this Church, rebuilt on the Roman ruin and dedicated in honour of St. Martin of Tours, that they came to worship.
We now jump to the year 597, to the landing in Kent of St. Augustine and his companions, bringing the Christian message. With the King's permission, it was to St. Martin's they came, and again to quote the words of Bede, "to meet, to sing, to pray, to say mass, to preach, and to baptize."
We took a bus back to The Pilgrim’s Rest but not to rest. We’d looked up a local pub in the good pub book of 2007. We walked the few hundred metres to get some dinner, only to find that the place was closed. (And had been for four years)!
We tried the pub across the road but they didn’t do meals. We asked where we might find a meal and the barmaid said to take a nearby road and try The Rose Inn. “You can’t miss it”, she said.
So we started to walk and 20 minutes later we realised that the barmaid must have thought we were driving because there was no sign of The Rose. We did eventually find it after 30 minutes and it was worth the walk. This little village of Wickhambreaux was set around a green. There was an old church, one or two big old houses and thatched cottages with oak beams, and an old weatherboard mill house with a water wheel and a running stream. The Rose Inn was a lovely low ceilinged place and you had to duck to get through the doorway. People must have been much shorter back in the fourteenth century when this place was built. But the meal was beautiful and the atmosphere was very friendly as it always is in these village pubs.
It was dark when we headed back to our hotel and walking along a narrow lane was a bit of a challenge. Every now and then we’d meet an oncoming car, and we’d have to flatten ourselves against the hedgerows. Anxious to avoid being turned into road kill, we made it back in a record 20 minutes .
In the morning we went back to Wickhambreaux to get a couple of snaps, then drove across Kent, through laneways with orchards laden with apples, and fields of new mown hay. Our next stop was for sandwiches on the Coulsden Downs. These are lovely rolling green downs at the top of Derwent Drive in the town of Purley, in Surrey. It’s where we lived back in the seventies. We even checked out our own houses in Purley and the Riddlesdown station where I took my train into town 35 years ago. Ahh nostalgia!
From there we drove on to East Sussex to enjoy afternoon tea with Beverley Seymour, our son-in-law Paul’s mum. His sister Catherine was there too and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours drinking coffee and telling them about our travels. Sadly we had to head for home in the Cotswolds a hundred miles away. The trip was fine until we reached the area of Heathrow and somehow got off the motorway at the wrong junction. There followed 45 minutes of sheer hell as we tried and tried to get back onto the M4. Every time we’d reach the roundabout leading to the crowded motorway, we’d miss the right turning and have to take off again. Eventually, after a lot of F words and soaring blood pressure, we made it and finally arrived back in Ascott under Wychwood at 8pm. We were too frazzled to prepare a meal, so we just had to have dinner at the Swan. That’s our story anyway!
We’re heading up to London today for a few days. Time is running out and we want to see a few more sights in that city before we head for home.