Story
The story of Canterbury Cathedral
In 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered inside this cathedral. His death turned Canterbury into one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the medieval world. The cathedral had been founded in 597, then completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077. After a fire in 1174, its east end was largely rebuilt in the new Gothic style and extended further east to make room for the flow of pilgrims coming to Becket's shrine.
The old Norman nave survived until the late 14th century, when it was pulled down to make way for the present one. Before the Reformation, this was both the archbishop's seat and a Benedictine monastery. Today it is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Church of England and symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and part of a World Heritage Site.
Walk east, as the pilgrims did, towards the place of the shrine.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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