It is in this way that Canterbury, being an old mediaeval city, is still surrounded by a defending wall, but in many places the wall has disappeared with the passing of time. Here and there in the wall there were once gateways leading into and out of the city, but today only one of these gateways survives in something of its pristine glory, and that is the West Gate.
Today, moreover, this gate stands by itself, neither supporting nor supported by any remnant of the old city wall. It consists of two stout bastions, crowned with battlements and linked together with an archway. The ingoing traffic still passes under the gate, but the outgoing traffic has to go round the gate. Pedestrians walk under the archway at their peril. The mediaeval builders couldn’t possibly have foreseen the large vans, lorries and double-decker buses that today edge their way through the gate, though in their eyes it must have seemed lofty enough. When the traffic is passing through there is little room on either side for the foolhardy pedestrian who may have been enticed this way by its romantic appearance.
Coming into Canterbury along the London Road one naturally enters the city by this West Gate. Approaching the city, one passes ranks of houses, which become increasingly older with the felt proximity of Canterbury, and not a few of them – notably one named “The House of Agnes” from Dickens’ David Copperfield and another named “The Falstaff Hotel” from Shakespeare’s plays of Henry IV – take on a distinctively Tudor appearance. Then between the houses on either side of the road, and among the traffic passing up and down the road, standing erect in mediaeval majesty against the moving clouds, the gate itself comes into view.
Nowadays in traveling round England it isn’t easy to know when one is entering or leaving a town or city. Modern buildings are scattered all over the place, no doubt reflecting the brains of their builders, or rather the age in which the builders are living. But in mediaeval times it wasn’t so. Everything, including towns and cities, had precise limits and definitions. You knew where you were, and where you were not. You could stretch out your hand and say, “This far is Canterbury, and from this point it is no longer Canterbury.” So in the form of this imposing gateway Canterbury has been greeting visitors from mediaeval times with no uncertain welcome. Once you pass under or outside the archway you really feel, “Now I am in Canterbury!”
There is something not only imposing but also forbidding about this gateway. It is after all the gateway to a castle, which comprehends the whole city, and every castle is built as it is against the possibility of enemy attack. So it is natural for every castle to look forbidding, but forbidding only to enemies. Those who come as friends aren’t forbidden entrance, least of all nowadays. Rather, they are welcomed into what isn’t only a castle but also a home. It is, moreover, not merely one home but many homes gathered together within the protecting walls of the city.
Nowadays it seems as if everyone who comes to Canterbury is a friend, and there are no more enemies left to fear in the world. So the gate stands open day and night. There is indeed no way of closing it, even if an enemy were suddenly to appear, for the simple reason that this is a gateway without a gate. In any case, it no longer supports or is supported by a wall. This was long ago destroyed by Cromwell, when he overcame the resistance of the royalist defenders of the city.
Stones, they say, have ears. Would that they also had tongues to re-echo the many words they have heard over the course of many centuries. The stones of this West Gate must have many an interesting tale to tell of the stirring times when Cromwell’s army made its assault on the city and broke down the wall at this point. Then there are also the more peaceful times of the Middle Ages, when Chaucer’s pilgrims wended their way to Canterbury “the holy blissful martyr for to seek”.
It was by the West Gate that pilgrims from London in Chaucer’s time would have made their way into the city, following the London Road, then turning right past the old road to Whitstable and the church of St. Dunstan’s. Here they would be obliged to slow down their horses, if they were on horseback, from a “canter” – a word that is etymologically derived from this very pilgrimage. The pilgrims would have spent much of their time on the pilgrimage chatting and telling each other merry tales, but towards the end they would have spurred on their horses to “a Canterbury gallop” so as to reach the city in good time before nightfall.
The memory of these Canterbury pilgrims, with all their merry tales and jests on the way, may also remind us of the serious purpose of their pilgrimage within the city. Up till now I have been dwelling on the gate, as I find it so impressive and full of symbolism, but it is only a gate. It is for defence, not residence – though in the past it has been used as a prison. Only when you have passed through or round the gate do you come to the homes of the citizens, as well as the inns and “hospitals” for visitors from outside. I should explain that the “hospitals” are the old buildings put up not for the sick – as we might think from the modern meaning of the word – but for the mediaeval pilgrims. Originally, the word “hospital”, like the related word “hospice”, meant a house where guests (hospites, in Latin) could find accommodation.
In this case the guests were the pilgrims who came here in increasing numbers during the Middle Ages not just from London but, as Chaucer informs us, “from every shire’s end”. They came not merely, like modern pilgrims, for the purpose of sight-seeing in a quaint old city with foundations going back to Roman times. They came principally to worship at the shrine of St. Thomas the martyr in the splendid cathedral which stands in the midst of the city.
The cathedral, too, has an imposing gateway of its own, less forbidding and more ornate than the West Gate. To this gateway massive oak gates are fixed, which can be closed – as they are, I suppose, at nightfall. Through the gateway one catches a glimpse of the South-West porch, the twin West towers and the great West window of the cathedral. What a magnificent sight it is! Everything in the structure of the cathedral seems to be tapering upwards, thrusting higher and higher in pinnacle upon pinnacle eagerly into the blue sky above. “So here is the centre,” I reflected, “round which cluster the homes that make up the city of Canterbury. Here is the centre which is chiefly defended by the city walls and to which the gateways give entrance. Here is the centre for which everything in the city exists, as Chaucer’s pilgrims understood better than most of those who come here today.”
Yet the cathedral isn’t for itself alone. From one point of view its lines all insist upwards, pointing towards heaven as the final end of earthly energy and endeavour. But from another the building as a whole forms the well-defined pattern of a cross, whose centre is marked by the stately central tower, named after its great bell “Harry”. It is this tower which gives its characteristic feature not only to the cathedral but to the whole city of Canterbury. It stands out as a landmark for miles around and dominates the countryside, with its solemn peals keeping the hours and its no less solemn silences ruling over the time in between.
Beneath and within the Gothic architecture is to be found what is most solemn and sacred in the edifice, at the foot of a long flight of stone steps descending from the high altar to a bare stone floor. Here eight hundred years ago the archbishop, Thomas A Becket, was cruelly murdered by four knights sent by their king, Henry II. Since then thousands of pilgrims have come here to pay their respects at the martyr’s shrine. In his memory in more recent times T.S. Eliot staged the first performance of his great religious drama, Murder in the Cathedral, in the nearby chapter house.
The shrine of the martyr, however, wasn’t actually here but higher up, at the top of the stone steps and behind the high altar. Here in the Middle Ages stood a magnificent shrine, enriched from century to century with the offerings of royal and noble pilgrims. One of the last of such pilgrims to enrich the shrine with his pious offerings was also the one who in an evil hour destroyed the shrine, pocketed all the offerings, and put an abrupt end to the pilgrimage, Henry VIII. He thus brought an end to the mediaeval period in England, that fairy age (as it now seems to us) to which we look back with nostalgia as the age of “merry England”. Then all traces of the shrine were swept away, and today nothing is left but an empty space on the tiled floor, and an empty thought of what would have once filled that space.
About the time that Henry’s messengers