Leigh Hatts

Details of events at Canterbury Cathedral on the Translation of St Thomas Becket, Saturday 7 July, are now available. The Translation marks the day in 1220 when St Thomas Becket’s body was moved upstairs from the Cathedral crypt to the shrine built in the Trinity Chapel behind the high altar. Saturday 7 July 11am Medieval […]

Each year a hundred people walk from St Martin-in-the-Fields to Canterbury over four days. The Pilgrimage along the Pilgrims’ Way is a sponsored event raising thousands of pounds for the work of The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields. It begins at the steps of the church in Trafalgar Square and ends in the Canterbury Cathedral cloisters. […]

Tony Robinson’s Britain’s Great Cathedrals on Channel 5 this Friday features Canterbury. He will be at Winchester on Friday 11 May. The series began on Good Friday with York Minster. Also due to feature are Salisbury, Durham and Liverpool.

From today you can have your Pilgrim Passport stamped at Lesnes Abbey. The monastery was opened just eight years after Thomas Becket’s murder by his supporter Richard de Lucy who dedicated it to the martyr Archbishop. Today its ruins remain in a delightful woodland setting famous for its daffodils which are now appearing. Passports should […]

Lent Lilies, or daffodils, are out at Lesnes Abbey as the garden and woods recover from the snow. Pilgrims from Southwark pass through Lesnes Abbey on their way from Shooters Hill to Dartford on Day 2. The Abbey, now an outline of stones, is dedicated to St Thomas Becket. Tradition holds that the daffodils are […]

With the hint of warmer weather pilgrims are starting to set out from Southwark Cathedral for Canterbury Cathedral. Those making the pilgrimage in Lent, that is before the end of this month, will see a huge dark cloud in Southwark Cathedral. This is the Lent installation by Susie MacMurray which is called Doubt. It hangs […]

A group from St Mary Magdalene Church Wandsworth Common set out today from Southwark to Canterbury. This is the first parish party of the 2018 season. They left London, with their vicar Philippa Boardman, two weeks ahead of Chaucer’s recommended April. The pilgrims received a blessing at the early morning Eucharist in Southwark Cathedral before […]

Expect the flag to be at half mast today at Lullingstone Castle where the funeral of Guy Hart Dyke is being held at the church in the grounds. He celebrated his 90th birthday a few days before a peaceful death on Monday 12 February. The church is St Botolph’s, known as ‘the church on the […]

This year is the centenary of the Muriel Spark’s birth. The novelist was born in Edinburgh on 1 February 1918. She died in 2006. Her complicated and at first stressful adult life saw her living at many addresses. One was Aylesford Priory on the Pilgrims’ Way where she arrived in October 1954. After a short […]

Pilgrimage can be made in many ways, by luxury group travel, on foot or by bike. But it does not need to be expensive or painful. A free one day event at Southwark Cathedral on Saturday 24 February will offer advice from experienced pilgrims on  how to prepare yourself physically and practically with suitable kit, […]