River Stour

There are several branches of the Stour: it splits as it passes through Canterbury. 

The Stour is a chalk river. At the moment (early June) after nearly a month of dry weather it is very shallow. The emerald coloured long river weeds are blossoming with little white flowers. 


This very much reminded me of the picture of Ophelia painted by Sir John Everett Millais of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood which is in the Tate. The model was Lizzie Siddall who posed in a water-filled tin bath and caught a severe cold which perhaps led to the tuberculosis that killed her. Siddall, who can be seen in many pre-Raphaelite paintings, later married painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Nunnery Fields

According to Doel & Doel (2018, 25), in 1100 Anselm founded the Nunnery of the Holy Sepulchre “next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, near the junction of Oaten Hill and the Old Dover Road."

Nunnery Fields is a road that leads from this junction, south-west across a bridge over the railway line near Canterbury East station and beyond.

The Miller's Arms

Between arriving in Canterbury in January 2020 and before lockdown (which started late March 2020) when pubs were closed, I only managed to eat twice at the Miller's Arms; both meals were superb and the Shepherd Neame draught beer was excellent.

During lockdown this delightful pub and restaurant (where you could also her accommodation) displayed these wonderfully creative window paintings (the rainbow colourings are to remind us to support and thank the NHS)

After Van Gogh's starry night

After The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai

After Girl with a Pearl Earing by Jan Vermeer

Greyfriars: the Franciscans

This is the only building left of the Greyfriars Franciscan friary. According to Doel & Doel (2018, 24) it was originally established by five friars who arrived in Canterbury in September 1224 and were given land on an island in the Stour by the master of the Poor Priests' Hospital.

I suppose that the Franciscan Garden, now owned by Eastbridge Hospital, is part of that original foundation.

By 1498 the friary had 18 acres and 35 friars.

The purpose of the building is unclear: "a hospitium, infirmary or warden's residence".

The shape of the arches suggest a construction date of no earlier than the twelfth century when the form became popular in European Gothic architecture. 

The Poor Priests' Hospital

This building is now (since 2017) the Marlowe Kit, a sort of extra studio theatre for the Marlowe Theatre. It also houses collections of the works of Marlowe and of Joseph Conrad.

"The site was a tannery and a minter’s house on the banks of the Stour in the twelfth century, which were converted into almshouses in the name of the Virgin Mary for elderly and poor priests by the minter’s son, Alexander. The priests used the house as a hall, sleeping round a central fire; a solar and an undercroft were added in 1373.” (Doel & Doel 2018)

It has also been:

• a boys' home
• a house of correction
• a workhouse
• a police station

Eastbridge Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr

The Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr upon Eastbridge was founded in 1190 by Edward FitzObold, a local merchant, to provide accommodation for pilgrims visiting the tomb of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, slaughtered in the Cathedral in 1170. 

According to Doel & Doel (2018, 21), it was refounded in 1342 by Archbishop Stratford; in 1569 it became a school for twenty boys (this lasted until the 1880s); in 1584 it was reformed by Archbishop Whitgift to offer “accommodation for ten poor people of Canterbury and a dole of food for ten more.”

If you go through the door in the centre of the photograph there is a small hall with steps down to the Undercroft, where the pilgrims slept in cubicles. Over this was the Refectory, where they would be fed, and above that a chapel. The lead structure poking out of the roof is a cage for a bell. 

The hospital is now an almshouse for the elderly.

Behind the hospital is the Franciscan Garden, a secluded, walled garden which was originally part of the Franciscan Friary founded in about 1250. The only building remaining from the friary, built in about 1267, is the Greyfriars chapel. 

Pilgrim Fathers

Cafe Chambers at the southern end of Palace Street where it joins Sun Street, a cafe which promises American style breakfasts, is the building where Phillipe de la Noye, lived. He was one of the early Pilgrim fathers and he sailed to Massachusetts on the Fortune. When he arrived "de la Noye changed his name to delano. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was his descendant.” (Pitkin Guide to Canterbury, p 24) He was a Walloon Huguenot who was born in Leiden in 1603. His mum, Marie de Lannoy (nee Mahieu) was born in 1580 in Canterbury. She may have been a member of the Wallon (or Strangers) Church in Canterbury.

It was in this building that Robert Cushman, "a Canterbury’s grocer’s assistant ... negotiated the charter of the Mayflower" (Pitkin Guide to Canterbury, p 24). At the age of 18, in about 1595, he was apprenticed to George Masters, a grocer who had the monopoly on making tallow candles in Canterbury. His religious beliefs were non-mainstream and he got into trouble in 1604 for printing and distributing leaflets against the Church of England. In 1605 he completed his apprenticeship and became a 'freeman' grocer. His son was baptised in 1608 and he emigrated to Leiden in 1611. He returned to England in 1617 and began to plan for the voyage to the new world. He sailed on the Speedwell in 1620 but when that got into difficulties and rendezvoused with the Mayflower in Dartmouth he didn't transfer ships as many others did. Thus he failed to become a true Mayflower Pilgrim Father, joining the nascent Plymouth Colony on the Fortune in 1621. As the Colony's London agent he was soon back in England and died in Benenden, Kent in 1625. He wrote Cry of a Stone sometime around 1619 but it was not published till after his death.