Westgate

The Westgate stands at the western edge of Canterbury’s old city walls, a medieval gatehouse built of Kentish ragstone. It rises 18 metres above the road that still passes between its drum towers, the last survivor of seven gates that once pierced Canterbury’s defences. The present structure dates from around 1379, replacing an earlier Roman and Norman gate that had stood on the same spot for centuries. Archbishop Simon Sudbury organised its rebuilding, partly to welcome pilgrims to St Thomas Becket’s shrine and partly as a show of strength against French raids. The gate’s thick ragstone walls, machicolations and eighteen gunloops show how seriously defence was taken in the 15th century. For nearly four hundred years the gate served as Canterbury’s prison, holding debtors and criminals in rooms above the arch and in the guard rooms. In 1648, after a riot, Parliamentarians burned the wooden doors of all the city gates, including those at Westgate. The building later housed a pound for stray animals and, until 1775, a grated cage where prisoners could beg for alms. In the 19th century the adjoining city walls were removed and a jailer’s house was built on the north side, later becoming a police station and now a bar and café. The Westgate Towers Museum opened in 1906 and remains a key site for understanding the city’s penal past. Visitors today walk through the vaulted passage between the drum towers and climb to the first-floor room where the portcullis mechanism once stood. The large central room has a restored perpendicular window looking toward the cathedral and St Peter’s Street. On the roof a battlemented parapet walk offers views over the Stour and the surrounding streets. Inside the north tower’s ground-floor room, fifteen forgotten plaster maquettes of the Magna Carta barons still stand, rediscovered after a flood in 2008. The south side leads to St Peter’s Place, a quiet square that preserves the gate’s setting in modern Canterbury.