16 December: Canterbury

Today is Canterbury Day. 10 things you might not know about the Cathedral city in south east England.

1. The settlement was founded by the Romans on the site of an ancient British town. The Romans, who called it Durovernum Cantiacorum. The latter word means “Kentish” while Durovernum was derived from the name of the older town, which means "stronghold by the alder grove". The modern name for the city comes from Old Welsh Cair Ceint ("stronghold of Kent") which in English was Cantwareburh ("stronghold of the Kentish men").
2. Canterbury was granted a city charter in 1448.
3. One of the city’s unusual buildings is the Crooked House, a building which looks as if it’s about to fall over. It was built in the 17^th century and was normal enough until an internal chimney slipped. It has a steel frame today, to make sure it doesn’t fall over. It’s sometimes known as Sir John Boys House because it’s said to have been the house of MP and recorder of Canterbury Sir John Boys, although there’s no evidence he ever lived there. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens wrote “A very old house bulging over the road…leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below…” which is thought to have been inspired by this building. At time of writing, it is occupied by a second hand book shop run by a charity for homeless people.
4. The city is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England. The very first Archbishop of Canterbury was St. Augustine, the founder of Christianity in Kent. He founded the Augustinian Abbey, outside the city walls. Of the first ten elected archbishops, nine became saints. The one who didn’t make the cut was Wighard who died of plague in around 666 before he could take up the post. There have been 105 Archbishops of Canterbury since 597, including Thomas Cranmer, the only one to be burnt at the stake, in 1556, and of course, St Thomas Becket, who was famously murdered in the cathedral in 1170.
5. Talking of which, the cathedral was first established in 597, and rebuilt from 1070 to 1077 by the Normans, using stone imported from Caen, France. The Cathedral Archives contain a document known as the Accord of Winchester signed by William the Conqueror. The fact he signed it with a cross suggests he might not have been able to read or write. The cathedral and its environs are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One British monarch is buried here, Henry IV. One more fact about the cathedral – the monks here had it good in 1165, since Prior Wilbert had installed one of medieval Britain’s first running water supplies, including flushing Toilets.
6. Beckett’s murder turned Canterbury into a destination for pilgrimages, which inspired one of England’s most significant literary works, the Canterbury Tales, although there is no evidence that author Geoffrey Chaucer ever visited the city himself. The verb to canter, on a Horse, originates with the pilgrims, too. As they approached the city, pilgrims on horseback would speed up to make sure they reached the city before curfew and this became known as the Canterbury trot.
7. Famous people who were born in Canterbury include Orlando Bloom, Sir Freddie Laker, Christopher Marlowe, W. Somerset Maugham and Mary Tourtel, the creator of Rupert Bear.
8. At the beginning of the 14^th century, Canterbury had the 10th largest population in England with around 10,000 people living there. Thanks to the plague the population had fallen to 3,000 by the early 16th century. In the 17^th century the population grew by a couple of thousand when Huguenots fleeing persecution and war in the Spanish Netherlands came to live there. The Huguenots introduced silk weaving into the city. Today, the population stands at around 44,000.
9. The world's first train season ticket was issued for the Canterbury and Whitstable railway in 1834.
10. 59 Palace Street’s claim to fame is that it was the address at which a man named Robert Cushman negotiated the lease of a ship called the Mayflower for a bunch of pilgrims wishing to sail to the New World, in 1620.

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