Roman Wall?

This is a section of wall outside the Parrot public house.

"The Roman wall was ... more than five feet thick as can be seen in front of the Parrot restaurant in St Radigan's." (Birmingham 2015, 43)

I can't see any evidence that this is a Roman wall but I don't really know what I am looking for, except for thin red bricks as can clearly be seen in the picture of St Martin's church on this page. 

The Parrot's website tells us that it is "One of Canterbury’s oldest buildings, ... built on Roman foundations in the 14th century"

There is a plaque next to this wall which says that this is the Roman wall but it was made higher and incorporated into the wall of St Mary's church. That's this wall:

You can see traces of red brick in the lower sections of the wall although they are fatter than what I would typically expect to see. Any Roman brick experts out there?

Charles Dickens stayed here

The Sun Hotel (originally called the Little Inn) is a Tudor building on the Burgate, just outside the entrance to Canterbury Cathedral. When was it built? The website says it is "a 15th century Tudor building" ,the plaque says it was built in 1503, and the Kent Messenger dates it to 1480.

Charles Dickens stayed at the Sun and wrote about it in David Copperfield; Mr Micawber stays at the Little Inn. David Copperfield goes to school in Canterbury and Micawber turns up as one of the teachers.

Local legend has it that the House of Agnes on St Dunstan's street just outside the Westgate (now offering bed and breakfast accommodation) is where Agnes, the woman who was to become David Copperfield's second wife, was imagined to have lived.

Don Juan in Kent?

Today I walked down to Dane John gardens where there is a little kiosk selling refreshments and some great cooked food called Don Juan, presumably named after the gardens but perhaps after the proprietor? The cafe advertises 'Sabor Latino' (Latin taste) and its menu belies its humble size: you can get Sunday Roasts and a wonderful range of Mediterranean dishes and Mexican streetfood. 

The gardens are beautiful and if you walk to the top of the Dane John mound you get some stunning views:

This is the traditional site of the first Norman castle; it is a motte, whose Norman word is donjon. A plaque on the site records that it was built by Hamo, son of Vitales "who appears on the Bayeux tapestry" (it is not clear whether this refers to Hamo or Vitales). 

In 1790 Alderman James Simmons shaped Dane John unto a cone and laid out the gardens (PCG, 14).

By the Domesday book in 1086 the castle had moved to its present site. The donjon later became part of the fourteenth century walls that are still very much erect at this spot:

This path along the walls takes you to the Riding Gate whose name is probably a corruption of Red Gate after the traces of red Roman brick that can be seen in it. This was part of the Roman walls and the gate allows access fto the city along Watling Street. 

I discover from the Pitkin City Guide to Canterbury that "archaeologists have shown that the Normans raised their first defences on a Roman burial mound" which is the Dane John. You can climb to the top:

Cricket in Kent: where it began?

Today's walk took me to the delightful suburb (they would probably rather I called it a village) of St Stephen's, to the northwest of the city centre, on the way to the University of Kent high on its hill.

There is a church with a row of terraced almshouses. The end house, which was where the Warden lived (shades of Trollope), has been turned into a pub called Ye Olde Beverlie Inn. Attached to it is a plaque:

So this was the first clubhouse for what became the Kent County Cricket Club.

Here is a photograph of the Inn (lurking behind the nearest traffic light) and the almshouse to the right, taken from the delightful if tiny St Stephen's Green.

If you walk from the inn across the green you reach the Beverley Meadow, still large enough to play cricket on. Just before the meadow is a fantastic old half-timbered house:

The Abbot's Mill

As I walk downstream along the Stour past Sainsbuty's and the coach park where, in normal days, the visitors arrive and pass the little Church of England primary school and past the car park I arrive at Saint Radegund's Bridge. Across the road is a pub called the Miller's Arms where the vegan chef cooks fantastic Sunday roasts (and other dishes too, all good) and which serves Shepherd Neame beers on draught. Of course it's closed at the moment due to the lockdown restrictions triggered by the Covid-2 coronavirus scare. But across the road from the marvellous Millers Arms is the Abbot's Mill gardens. Even a shallow river like the Stour gushes quiter convincingly through the weir here, in the olden days it must have provided a significant source of power.

A notice records that the mill was built by Hugh II, the abbot of St Augustine's Abbey. He used his own money to buy it, during the reign of King Stephen, according to the Historic Canterbury website. 

It is a pleasant spot and you can bridge the Stour here and walk further south through a garden called Solly's Orchard where a cider company have joined the City Council in planting apple trees for the benefit of hungry passers-by. 

Then you can walk past the Marlowe onto the High Street. 

Mysterious fauna and flora

Well maybe not mysterious. I am just ignorant. But here is a family of ducks the like of which I'd never seen before. I suspect that the blue/ purple coloured one on the bank fourth from the left is the drake. The bird on the bank sitting next to him is, perhaps, the mature female, his missus, and the light brown coloured ducks are daughters. In the water is another drake, the young lad, trying out his charms on what would appear to be a mallard duck.

Are these just off-colour ducks, a family of freaks? Or is this another species. Anybody out there know?

I also found what might be an orchid on a secluded part of the Stour bank: 

Once again my ignorance prevents me from knowing anything about this.

The Canterbury Roman Theatre

The Roman road Watling Street went from Dover through Canterbury to London (and then on to St Albans and Wroxeter). The London to Dover section more or less follows the A2 although in Canterbury itself the High Street that was the old coaching A2 (the route that Geoffrey Chaucer's pilgrims would have taken) is slightly to the north of Watling Street.

The Three Tuns pub is on Watling Street (a section still bearing that name) in Canterbury. It is built on the site of the old Roman Theatre as this sign shows:

The oldest church in the English-speaking world

Today I went to the east of Canterbury city centre to see St Martin's Church.

Bertha (died about 601) was a Christian Frankish princess who married the pagan King Aethelbert of Kent. According to Bede she adopted a pre-existing Roman church on this site to be her private chapel, naming it for St Martin of Tours, a town near when she grew up. When St Augustine arrived on his mission to convert the English (597) he adopted this church as his headquarters, and here he baptised the King (who by this time ruled not just Kent but all of the eastern side of England as far north as the Humber). It was after this that he built his Abbey (nearby) and the church that became the Cathedral (a little further off).

This infor comes from Bede, the historian, saint and 'doctor' of the church, who writes of "a church dedicated of old to the honour of St. Martin, built whilst the Romans were still in the island" in chapter 26 of his Ecclesiastical History of England, written about 731.

From the front view above the church looks Victorian mock-mediaeval but if you look at the side walls of the back you can see Roman bricks (typically flat) among the Saxon flints:

You can learn more about this church from its website here.

The Murder of Archbishop Sudbury

Today my Canterbury travels took me behind the modernist trapezium of the Marlowe Theatre and past the bijou Curzon Cinema to Pound Street. Here is Sudbury Tower, a fourteenth century tower built into the town walls near the Westgate and named after Simon of Sudbury, a controversial Archbishop of Canterbury.

Born in Sudbury (Suffolk) he studied in Paris and became chaplain to Pope Innocent VI, based in Avignon, who sent him in a diplomatic misson to Edwatd III of England. In 1362 he became Bishop of London and in 1375 Archbishop of Canterbury. 

In 1377 Edward III died and Sudbury crowned the boy King Richard II in Westminster Abbey. This did no harm to his career since he became Lord Chancellor in 1380. He was instrumental in the introduction of the poll tax which sparked the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 led by John Ball and Wat Tyler. When the peasants came to London they attacked the Tower and found him hiding there. They dragged him out and beheaded him (apparently it took eight blows to sever the neck completely).

This is what I love about Canterbury. In the old days, when parchment was a scarce resource, a scribe would sometimes use parchment that had already been written on; they would scrape off the ink and reuse it. This means that many historical documents have been lost but also that some have been preserved: in some cases we can still read the ancient text. The technical term for such a multiply rewritten manuscript is a palimpsest. Canterbury is like a palimpsest: its new streets have old buildings; within in nowness there are the marks of old times. 

Sex on the Stour

I arrived in Canterbury in January, suffered on successive weekends storms Ciara and Dennis and by the end of March entered the coronavirus lockdown with everyone else in the UK (and so many around the entire world). So I haven't had a lot of chance to get to know the city. But the current lockdown rules allow me an hour's exercise every day so I'm exploring the bits that are open.

I hadn't realised how wet the west of Canterbury is. As it flows past the town the Stour breaks into a number of pieces. I love walking down the bank and observing the wildlife. As a Londoner (long ago) I have often had the opportunity to see fucking pigeons but today I saw pigeons fucking. And a pair of Mallard drakes having a fight. And what is either a rat or a water vole. Spring is in the air and that means sex. Even the flowers are getting in on the act: a flower is essentially the sex organs of a plant and the beautiful colours and fragrances are designed to attract insects so pollination (insemination) can occur.

Blooming tulips on North Lane outside the Cafe du Soleil

The great thing about the Stour is that it is a chalk river; there are only 210 of these in the world and almost all of them are in England with a few in Northern France. Today the water was beautifully clear and showed the emerald-green water weeds sprouting from the gravel bed.

As well as the unruly wildlife there are observations of the human fauna. There is a new breed of lockdown jogger. These are mostly ladies. I'm not one to criticise another person's body: when you're living in a glass house like myself you can't throw stones; these days I bulge in all directions except the places I have always wished I bulged. But I wear tents. I wear ill-fitting garments. Shirts are never tucked. I've even moved to braces. These joggers favour body-hugging lycra perhaps in the belief that their so so solid flesh is indeed about to melt and that the consequence will be an awkward splurge, a consummation most devoutly to be wished away.