Good lord, am I still to be found loitering under that tree?? I remember the book...the lost honour...
Good lord, am I still to be found loitering under that tree?? I remember the book...the lost honour of katherina blum by Heinrich Boll: jolly good, but please believe me that it hasn't taken me the last trillion years to read it! Hello all Kx
Member since:23.05.2002
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Could one visit Canterbury and not feel the inexorable tug of the majestic Cathedral? The grandeur and beauty of the building and precincts are well documented and its history formidable.
In 1170 four knights, believing themselves to be acting on the instruction of Henry II, murdered Archbistop Thomas Becket in the Cathedral. Until the destruction of his shrine in 1538 by Thomas Cromwell, the cathedral became a place of pilgrimage for the old and the sick. Millions passed through in the hope of redemption in the presence of the shrine of the saint devoted to the poor and the needy.
However, ice-cream vendors, jugglers, whining children, French coach tour groups and Japanese snappers can easily dominate a visit today. The hustle, the bustle, the queues and the elbows can all make for a demanding and sticky summer morning outing.
I offer you an alternative pilgrimage: retrace the steps of the devoted, move through the crowds, pass down the teeming Mercery Lane and onto the High Street of hot dogs and chain stores and you will come to the Gothic doorway of the Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr, known as Eastbridge Hospital. Away from the sun and the noise, stepping into the sanctuary of the cool stone Vestibule feels like a real privilege.
Would it have felt any different for the scores of poor pilgrims on their way to the Cathedral who found comfort and solace in this tiny stone hospital? Build in around 1190 the lower part of the building houses the Undercroft, an arched crypt in the Transitional gothic style with an irregular feel due to the foundations shifting on the banks of the River Stour. Here up to twelve pilgrims could sleep in peace and relative comfort until recovery or death moved them on.
Upstairs in the Refectory the pilgrims were fed in the large pillared hall which still hosts a 12th Century termera painting of the figure of Christ in a Mandorla, under a beautifully constructed crownpost roof. The small upper chapel is where they took mass and prayed each day.
Why do the relatively few visitors feel it necessary to whisper to each other in shady corners rather than speak out loud in this pretty place? To break the serenity and calm the building offers would surely be as inappropriate now as it ever was.
Take a deep breath, blink until your eyes are used to the summer sun and rejoin the noisy, fast-moving, modern world.
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Jun 18th, 2002
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