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Royal Oak landlords Frank Taylor and John Porteous have left after years of playing a pivotal role in the community by supporting the arts, heritage and Pilgrims’ Way. The Royal Oak in Southwark’s Tabard Street now starts the new year with a new team. This is the first pub out of Southwark on the Pilgrims’ […]

The statue of Our Lady of Walsingham from the Slipper Chapel in Norfolk is at St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Southwark until Saturday 23 February. This is a rare event and the accompanying exhibition has much resonance for those interested in the Pilgrims’ Way. Other centres of pilgrimage are highlighted including Aylesford on the […]

The best place to be with resonance on St Valentine’s Day must be Southwark Cathedral. It has the splendid tomb of John Gower who was one of the first, if not the first, to write a love poem associating mating birds with 14 February. His friend Geoffrey Chaucer, who knew Southwark well, wrote about love […]

Andrew Ramsey, Rector of Oxted on the PW, is today to be made a Bishop. Oxted in Surrey is on the Winchester to Canterbury PW route but his consecration as bishop takes place at Southwark Cathedral which is the start of the London route. Oxted means place of the oaks so the parish has given […]

The churchyard at Bentley in Hampshire has a remarkable yew canopy making visitors stoop. Bentley does not find a place in Tony Hall’s The Immortal Yew book but the one in Ichen Abbas churchyard does. Tony makes two interesting observations. One is that John Hughes, the last person to be hanged for stealing horse, is […]

This year St Thomas Becket Day falls at the weekend. Saturday 29 December, the fifth day of Christmas, is the anniversary of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s murder in 1170. At Canterbury Cathedral the day begins at 8am with the Eucharist celebrated at the Altar of the Sword’s Point on the martyrdom site. Festal Holy Communion […]

Friday 21 December is St Thomas Becket’s birthday. He was was baptised Thomas because his birth was on the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle. The naming after Thomas was always a matter of great importance  to the archbishop.  The apostle is now remembered on 3 July rather than in Advent. Thomas Becket was  born […]

The Pilgrims’ Way just misses the centre of Compton in Surrey although it passes the Watts Gallery’s teashop. But on arriving at the road, and before turning left for the gallery and teashop, you could turn right and walk for about three minutes to the cemetery. The round cemetery chapel, known as the Watts Chapel, was […]

John Butler’s book on Archbishops of Canterbury is now out. This is a 112 page Pitkin paperback. Professor Butler is a Canterbury Cathedral guide and the author of The Quest for Becket’s Bones so the chapter on Thomas Becket is especially interesting. We know that Henry II probably did not say: “Who will rid me […]

Murals in the Old Kent Road will be removed and put in storage if a demolition plan is approved. The mosaics by Adam Kossowski (1905-1986) were completed in 1965 and  adorn the former North Peckham Civic Centre. Depicted are people known to have travelled the Roman road to and from Canterbury. Adam Kossowski’s work is […]