Leigh Hatts

Sunday 29 December is St Thomas of Canterbury Day when the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket during Christmas 1170 is remembered. It will be a low-key day as this year it is a Sunday when most churches are keeping Holy Family Sunday or First Sunday of Christmas. At Canterbury Cathedral there is evensong at 3.15pm […]

Part of the 12th-century St Lawrence Chapel on the PW at Upper Halling near the River Medway is for sale. The chapel dates from just after Thomas Becket’s death and had a chaplain until 1547. After the Reformation, when Henry VIII banned pilgrimage to Canterbury, the chapel was used by drovers and other travellers for […]

Since the publication of Walking The Pilgrims’ Way in 2017 there has been reader and walker feedback as well as ongoing research. This recently resulted in a welcome change to the path running out of Otford towards Kemsing. As at Otford, there is a problem of an unpopular busy road at Godmersham. The present guide […]

It is known that for centuries the Bishop of Winchester had a residence in Southwark. The ruin of the great hall is in Clink Street. Winchester Walk, opposite the present Southwark Cathedral west end, is the old palace entrance with Winchester Square being the surviving courtyard. But where were the other houses known to pilgrims? […]

Some church candles were once made to the height of a deceased person being remembered. Sometimes they were the same height of a living person needing our prayers. Candles representing pilgrims, the dead and others will form just part next year’s Lent art installation being created by Michelle Rumney for Southwark Cathedral. Lent starts on […]

TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is being performed by Scena Mundi theatre company at Southwark Cathedral this week and two more performances are due next Tuesday and Wednesday. This is the story of St Thomas Becket’s murder in 1170 at Canterbury. Staging a production at Southwark has resonance for the Archbishop visited the then […]

Today in the church calendar is Blessed John Henry Newman’s ‘optional memorial’. Next year it will be St John Henry Newman’s Day because this coming Sunday he is to be declared a saint by Pope Francis during an open air Mass in Rome. Newman is England’s first post-Reformation saint. He has left us his popular […]

Many church along the Pilgrims’ Way are preparing to observe harvest thanksgiving, or Harvest Festival, this Sunday.

As we approach Becket 2020 year a book is being published which will change what many look at on arrival in Canterbury. When pilgrims enter Canterbury Cathedral now they go to the Trinity Chapel behind St Augustine’s Chair to see the site of St Thomas Becket’s shrine. A single candle burns in the centre of […]

A group of history enthusiasts met on Sunday night outside the Mecure hotel in Winchester. This is where, in an earlier building, John Keats stayed two hundred years ago. On Sunday afternoon 19 September he walked out into the countryside before writing his his poem To Autumn. At lunchtime some of us had heard the […]