Beautiful Britain Part 2

Mr. T. G.o.dfrey Faussett's plan of Roman Canterbury appears to carry the wall just as far as this point, and then turns at an acute angle towards the south side of the Cathedral. Following the direction Queen Bertha would have taken brings one to the great gateway of St.

Augustine's Abbey, the Benedictine monastery founded by Augustine on the land given for that purpose by Ethelbert. It was at first dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and the original buildings were finished in 613. Having become the place of burial for the Kings of Kent and the Archbishops, the Abbey quite overshadowed the Priory of Christ Church, until in 758 Archbishop Cuthbert was secretly buried within the claustral confines of his own priory. At the Dissolution Henry converted the stately buildings into a palace, so that the royal visits, which had been of no infrequent occurrence in the days of monastic hospitality, continued; and while the lordly pile pa.s.sed through the hands of various owners, Elizabeth, Charles I., and Charles II. paid visits on various occasions.

A century ago, when appreciation of the architecture of the dead centuries when Englishmen built with superlative skill had ebbed to its lowest, the Abbey had sunk to inconceivably debased uses. The monastic kitchen had been converted into a public-house, and the great gateway--the finest structural relic of the Abbey--had become the entrance to a brewery, while c.o.c.k-fighting took place in the state bedroom above. The pilgrims' guest hall, now the college dining-hall, had become a dancing-hall, and the ground, unoccupied by buildings, soil hallowed by the memories of so many saintly lives and a.s.sociated with the momentous days when England was being released from the toils of pagan ignorance became known as "the Old Palace Tea-gardens." The popular mind had seemingly forgotten the original uses of the place they were desecrating with fireworks and variety shows.

At last, in 1844, Mr. Beresford Hope rescued the half-destroyed remnants of the abbey-palace, and through his generosity the present missionary college was founded, and the buildings restored or reconstructed. A more happy idea could scarcely have been suggested than that of a.s.sociating the abbey founded by the first missionary of Christianity to England with modern efforts to carry the light into the dark places of the earth. The much-restored gateway, built by Abbot Fyndon at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the guest-hall, and part of the memorial chapel, are the chief portions of the old structures incorporated into the buildings that surround three sides of the college quadrangle. Standing apart to the south is one of the huge walls of the nave of the abbey church, and to the east are the extensive excavations of the east end of the crypt and other fascinatingly early remains of the historic churches mentioned in an earlier chapter (p. 17).

Leaving the Abbey grounds, and continuing to the east, one reaches in a few minutes the little church of St. Martin set on the knoll to which Queen Bertha directed her steps. It is, however, a disappointingly familiar type of Early English village church to the casual glance, and until the fabric and the remarkable font have been examined and discussed in the light of modern scientific archaeology it is difficult to appreciate the h.o.a.ry antiquity of at least parts of the structure. To understand the indications of the Saxon, or possibly Roman, work in the fabric, and to know the reasons for considering the font a relic of Saxon times, it is scarcely possible to find a better instructor than Canon Routledge, whose little book is all one can desire.

When the Cathedral, the Abbey, and St. Martin's Church have been visited, it is too often thought that Canterbury has yielded up all her treasures, but this is an amazingly mistaken idea. There still remain to be seen the Castle, the walls, the old inns, the many interesting examples of early domestic architecture, the remains of the lesser religious houses and hospitals, a wonderful array of interesting churches, and the excellent museum. Of the Castle the great Norman keep, completed about 1125, still stands, having been allowed to remain because the walls were found to be too hard to easily destroy; but up to the time of writing the Corporation has not purchased the immense sh.e.l.l, and it therefore remains a storage place for the coal of the adjoining gasworks. The remains of the buildings of the Black, or Preaching, Friars, and those of the Grey Friars, who belonged to the rule of St. Francis, are on islands formed by the Stour, and are marked in nearly every plan of the town. The hospitals include that of St. John the Baptist in North Gate Street, Eastbridge Hospital in St. Peter Street, and the Poor Priests' Hospital near Stour Street. Outside the city, at Harbledown, is the interesting old Hospital of St. Nicholas, a home for lepers, who were separately housed.

Of the churches it would be easy to write a great deal, but there is merely s.p.a.ce to point out that the only one lacking in interest is All Saints' in High Street. At St. Dunstan's the head of Sir Thomas More is preserved in a vault, but it is never possible to see it, and one must be content with the picturesque brick gateway of the Roper house in St. Dunstan's Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF CANTERBURY CASTLE.

KEY TO NUMBERS.

1. Door to Cloisters.

2. Door In Cloisters.

3. Dean's (or Lady) Chapel.

4. St. Michael's Chapel.

5. Baptistery.

6. Library (Howleian).

7. Treasury.

8. Chapel of King Henry IV.

9. Arundel Tower (N.W.).

10. Dunstan Tower (S.W.).

11. Entrance to French Church.

12. Archbishop Benson.

13. Bishop Parry.

14. Archbishop Sumner.

15. Sir T. Hales.

16. Colonel Stuart.

17. Dr. Beaney.

18. Dean Fotherbye.

19. Archbishop Chicheley.

20. Archbishop Bourchier.

21. Archbishop Kemp.

22. Archbishop Sudbury.

23. St. Dunstan (site).

24. Archbishop Tait.

25. King Henry IV.

26. Edward, the Black Prince.

27. Becket's Shrine (site).

28. Cardinal Pole.

29. Unknown.

30. Archbishop Mepham.

31. Archbishop Winchelsey.

32. Henry de Estria.

33. Stephen Langton.

34. Archbishop's ancient Chair.

35. Memorial to Dean Farrar.

36. Wm. Broughton, Bishop of Sydney and Adelaide.

37. Archbishop Boyes.

38. Tomb of Dean Farrar.

39. Tomb of Archbishop Temple.

40. Two columns from Reculver.]