The Cathedral's history goes back to 597AD when St Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great as a missionary, established his seat (or 'Cathedra') in Canterbury. In 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the Cathedral and ever since, the Cathedral has attracted thousands of pilgrims, as told famously in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.



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Canterbury was surrounded by a wall in Roman times. Traces survive here and there. A fragment of the Roman Queningate can be seen in the city wall opposite St. Augustine's Great Gate, and further up, nearer Burgate, the Roman foundation of the wall is visible.



The walls are mentioned in several Anglo-Saxon documents. In 1011 the Danes succeeded in breaking into the city, slaughtering the inhabitants, and tossing them over the walls.



It has not yet been established whether the Roman and Saxon walls ran altogether on the same line as the later medieval walls, but about 1100 A.D. the city fortifications included the same area as they did to the end of the 18th century.



There were six gates in use in medieval times:-Northgate, Burgate, Newingate, Ridingate, Worthgate and Westgate. Later another came into existence, Wincheap Gate. The walls were frequently rebuilt and reconstructed but never called upon to withstand any real siege after 1011, though the city represented an important strongpoint in the system of national defence.



The West Gate is Grade I listed and a scheduled ancient monument.

The city walls are a scheduled ancient monument.

A historic park within Canterbury city's walls which dates back to 1551, and includes a mound which historical records prove was there in the first century AD. In 1790, local dignitary Alderman James Simmons laid out the park into formal gardens. In 1999, Canterbury City Council completed a million pound renovation of the park supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and local sponsorship.

Sitting just inside the city walls in Dane John gardens, a conical mound, rising 80 feet, which historical records date back to at least the 1st century AD.



Visitors can take a spiral path to the top where there is a monument, dated 1803, to Alderman Simmons, who paid for much of the landscaping in the gardens.

The remains of a Benedictine Abbey. There has been a building on this site for over 1400 years.

A UNESCO World heritage Site. A Grade I listed building. Link

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