St Augustine's Abbey

St Augustine’s Abbey stands in Canterbury, Kent, on the site where King Æthelberht gave Augustine of Canterbury land for a church and monastery in 598. The first buildings were wooden, but the church was rebuilt in stone and consecrated in 613. A second church to Saint Mary was added east of the site around 624. For two centuries the abbey was the only major religious house in Kent, serving as a centre for learning and manuscript production. Its library grew large, holding both religious and secular works. In the 10th century Archbishop Dunstan reorganised the abbey to follow Benedictine rule and added Saint Augustine’s name to the dedication in 978. After Danish raids spared the site, King Cnut granted extra lands and the relics of Saint Mildrith, which drew pilgrims and gifts. Following the Norman Conquest, the abbey was rebuilt in Romanesque style and enlarged through the 13th and 14th centuries. New cloisters, a refectory, kitchen, abbot’s lodging and a great hall appeared, along with a Lady chapel and a walled vineyard. The abbey gatehouse, rebuilt between 1301 and 1309 by Abbot Fyndon, still stands as the Great Gate. Above its entrance is the state bed-chamber where Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria slept in 1625. Nearby, Lady Wootton’s Green holds statues of Æthelberht and Queen Bertha. To the east, St Anne’s Chapel was built in the 1360s by Juliana Leybourne and contains tombs of two abbots and her own burial place. The ruins and surviving gatehouse remain as evidence of the abbey’s long history from Augustine’s mission to the Dissolution.