Canterbury Cathedral: West Front, Nave and Central Tower.
Seen from the South. Image assembled from 4 photos.
Photo: September 2005.
Source: Picture taken and post-processed by Hans Musil.
Author: Hans Musil.
Permission: Author is copyright owner.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Canterbury Cathedral in
Canterbury,
Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous
Christian structures in England and forms part of a
World Heritage Site. It is the
Cathedral of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the
Church of England and symbolic leader of the worldwide
Anglican Communion. Its formal title is the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ at Canterbury.
Founded in 597 A.D., the Cathedral was completely rebuilt 1070-77. The East End was greatly enlarged at the beginning of the 12th-Century, and largely rebuilt in the Gothic Style following a fire in 1174. The Norman Nave and Transepts survived until the late-14th-Century, when they were demolished to make way for the present structures.
The Cathedral's first Archbishop was
Augustine of Canterbury, previously
abbot of St. Andrew's
Benedictine Abbey in Rome. He was sent by
Pope Gregory the Great in 596 A.D., as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine founded the Cathedral in 597 A.D., and dedicated it to Jesus Christ, the
Holy Saviour.
Augustine also founded the
Abbey of St. Peter and Paul outside the
city walls. This was later re-dedicated to St. Augustine, himself, and was for many centuries the burial place of the successive Archbishops. The Abbey is part of the
World Heritage Site of Canterbury, along with the Cathedral and the ancient
Church of St. Martin.
Anglo-Saxon Cathedral
Bede recorded that Augustine re-used a former Roman Church. The oldest remains found during excavations beneath the present Nave in 1993 were, however, parts of the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon building, which had been constructed across a Roman road. They indicate that the original Church consisted of a Nave, possibly with a
Narthex, and Side-Chapels to the North and South. A smaller subsidiary building was found to the South-West of these foundations.
Fulk de Cantelupe and Henry de Cornhill, Sheriff of Kent, are sent by King John
Engraving: 1864.
London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, pp. p. 215
Retrieved on 12 November 2010.
Engraver: Edmund Evans (1826 - 1905).
(Wikimedia Commons)
During the 9th- or 10th-Century, this Church was replaced by a larger structure (49 metres by 23 metres) with a squared West End. It appears to have had a square Central Tower. The 11th-Century chronicler,
Eadmer, who had known the Saxon Cathedral as a boy, wrote that, in its arrangement, it resembled St Peter's in Rome, indicating that it was of
Basilican form, with an Eastern Apse.
During the reforms of Archbishop St.
Dunstan (
circa 909 A.D. - 988 A.D.), a Benedictine Abbey, named Christ Church Priory, was added to the Cathedral. But the formal establishment as a Monastery seems to date to
circa 997 A.D., and the community only became fully monastic from
Lanfranc's time onwards (with monastic constitutions addressed by him to Prior Henry). St. Dunstan was buried on the South side of the High Altar.
The Screen, leading to the Choir,
Photo: April 2011.
Source: Own work.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Cathedral was badly damaged during Danish raids on Canterbury in 1011. The Archbishop, Alphege, was held hostage by the raiders and eventually killed at Greenwich, London, on 19 April 1012, the first of Canterbury's five martyred Archbishops. After this,
Lyfing (1013–1020) and
Aethelnoth (1020–1038) added a Western Apse as an Oratory of
St. Mary.
The 1993 excavations revealed that the Apse was polygonal and flanked by hexagonal towers, forming a
westwork. It housed the Archbishop's throne, with an altar of St Mary just to the East. The arcade walls were strengthened and towers added to the Eastern corners at around the time the westwork was built.
PART TWO FOLLOWS
