St Radegun’s Day is Wednesday 13 August which is a good date to visit Canterbury’s Parrot Inn. This is the city’s oldest pub and has a strong claim to having been accommodation for pre-Reformation pilgrims from 1370.

The late 14th-century hall house building is the former St Radigund’s Hall belonging to St Radegun’s Abbey (with an e) near Dover.

St Radegund was a 6th-century German princess and a vegan who founded Poitiers Abbey.

The ‘oldest pub’ claim comes from the understanding that it was an inn or hostel.

Many of the inns in Southwark were permanent London lodgings belonging to a diocese or monastery but open to pilgrim guests when not needed by the bishop, abbot or prior.

A hostel can be collection of buildings and it is known that the Abbot of St Radigund’s main house was at the end of Duck Lane opposite today’s pub. The site is behind The Dolphin in St Radigunds Street. The hostel complex, just beside North Gate, appears to have straddled the city wall.

Canterbury’s Parrot pub, little visited by tourists and opposite a section of the city’s Roman wall, is found down the very narrow Church Lane off The Borough.

The building returned to being a place of hospitality only in 1987 after a long closure and is now in the hands of Shepherd Neame who brew the Pilgrims’ Way ale known as Bishop’s Finger.

The pub’s present name, first used here in the 19th century before lapsing, is inspired by mention of a parrot in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

The Parrot, 1-9 Church Lane CT1 2AG is open all day.