St Augustine's Abbey

Listen for a moment. Traffic hums beyond the wall, but here the sound drops away. Under your feet, short grass gives way to rough flint and pale stone. Low walls run in lines across the lawn, some no higher than your knee. Above them, over the rooftops, the great tower of Canterbury Cathedral rises against the sky. You are standing in one of the oldest Christian sites in England. Most of it now lies at ground level.

To understand this place, go back to the end of the sixth century. Pope Gregory the Great sent a monk named Augustine from Rome to the kingdom of Kent. He arrived in 597 with a small group of companions. The king of Kent, Æthelberht, was not a Christian. But his wife was. Queen Bertha was a Frankish princess from across the Channel, and she had brought her faith and her own chaplain with her.

That royal marriage opened the door. Æthelberht welcomed the mission, and in time he accepted baptism. He gave Augustine land here, just outside the old Roman city walls. A monastery was founded around 598. It was first dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. Only centuries later did it take the name of Augustine himself, the man who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

Why build outside the walls? Roman custom did not allow burials inside a town. This monastery was planned from the start as a resting place for kings and archbishops. So it needed space beyond the city. Here is a detail many visitors miss. The cathedral and this abbey were founded as two separate houses, with two separate purposes. One served the living bishop. The other kept the honoured dead.

Walk toward the remains of the earliest churches. In one small side chamber, called a porticus — a chapel attached to the side of a church — markers show where early archbishops were buried. Augustine was laid to rest here, and so were several of his successors. Æthelberht and Bertha were buried here too. Stand still for a moment. These are among the founding graves of English Christianity.

Look closely at the foundations around you. In several places you will see thin, flat, reddish bricks mixed into the stone. These are Roman bricks. The first builders reused material from the ruined Roman town. This is especially clear at the ruins of the small chapel of Saint Pancras, at the eastern side of the site. Old Rome is built directly into the walls of early England.

Now look for a large circle traced in the ground. This is the base of an ambitious project from the eleventh century. Abbot Wulfric began a great round building, a rotunda, to link two older churches. It took its idea from churches on the Continent. But the project was never finished. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the new Norman abbots cleared it away. They wanted something larger.

And they built it. The Normans raised a huge Romanesque abbey church here. Romanesque is the style of thick walls and rounded arches that came before Gothic. For roughly four and a half centuries, this was one of the wealthiest and most important monasteries in the country. Monks prayed, copied books, managed estates, and welcomed pilgrims. The abbey had a famous library, though only a part of its books survives today.

Then everything changed. In 1538, during the reign of Henry the Eighth, the abbey was closed. This was part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when the crown seized the property of religious houses across England. Part of the site became a royal residence. The great church, however, was taken apart. Its stone was carried off and reused, and some of it ended up in buildings across Canterbury.

This is the second surprise of the site. The abbey did not simply fall down over time. Most of it was removed on purpose, cart by cart. What you see now is mostly what was left below ground level. Over the following centuries the land was used for gardens, a brewery, and other everyday purposes. Careful excavation in the twentieth century brought the plan of the churches back into view.

In the nineteenth century, new life returned to part of the site. A missionary college was founded here in the 1840s, to train clergy for service abroad. Its buildings, in a revived medieval style, still stand along the northern edge. Today that part belongs to a school, so you can admire it from outside. The fine stone gatehouse on the street also belongs to this later chapter of reuse.

In 1988, this abbey became part of a World Heritage Site, together with the cathedral and the small Church of Saint Martin nearby. Saint Martin's is where Queen Bertha worshipped before Augustine arrived. The three sites tell one story in three stages. A queen's private chapel came first. Then the monastery for the dead. Finally, the cathedral that grew into the centre of the English church.

Before you leave, stand at the eastern end and look back west, toward the cathedral tower. Notice how close the two sites are... a short walk, yet they were separate communities for almost a thousand years. Feel the uneven ground, the cool flint, the quiet of the lawn. As you pass back through the gate and into the street noise, remember the graves behind you. This is where the story of Christian Canterbury began.