Canterbury

Canterbury Succeeding an important late Iron Age settlement, the civitas‐capital of Durovernum was laid out on either side of the Great Stour in the later 1st cent. By the later 4th cent. the town was in decay. It re‐emerged as the capital of a pagan English kingdom of Kent, to which St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. Gregory intended the new English church to have archbishops at London and York, but a series of historical accidents led to Augustine and his successors remaining at Canterbury. Canterbury became one of the larger English walled towns, with a self‐governing corporation, but it was dominated until the 1530s by its two great abbeys of Christ Church (the cathedral) and St Augustine's. The city suffered economically from the dissolutions at the Reformation, but revived modestly through silk‐weaving introduced by Walloon refugees, and later as a social centre for gentry and clergy.