 Spanish. Thank you so much for such lovely introduction. Thank you for having me back again here at the Society of Antiquities. Can everyone hear me ok? Can you hear me now? Yes? Excellent. Ok, so just by way of introduction, just building on what Liz was saying about my background, I just wanted to start by telling you a little bit about cathedral archaeology ac yn mynd i chi. Felly, rydyn ni'n ymwneud y cethedrall archiologi ar Canterbury. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl yw Tim Tatton Brown a'r Martin Biddle, rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r cethedrall archiologi a'r Martin i'r Wynchester a'r Orbyn Cethedrall, ac Tim Tatton Brown i'r cethedrall archiologi ar gyfer y Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth arall. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl yng nghyrch ar y ffrindigol ac yn y ddweud y gorfod ar y llêf yng nghyrch yn fwyaf o'r cysylltu. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r cethedrall ar canterbury. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r cethedrall ar Canterbury, ac rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r cethedrall ar Llywodraeth yn ym 8 oed i'r cethedrall archiologi ar gyfer y Llywodraeth. ac wedi ddod i'r programu Traffordd Llywodraeth Cymru, yn ymgyrch yn Llywodraeth Cymru, ychydigio'r project argyfwyrdol gwaith o'r cyfrifoldigau mewn fforddol o'r Fforddorol. Yn ystod, gyda'r peth o'r ffrwg, yna'r Fforddorol Recording anobservatio'r grwp, fforddol yn ychydigio'r Pallys Grenig, a'i wneud o'r 16th i 17th Cymbr Jedi. Gallwch ar draws i'r ddigon arwain Llywodraeth i Gwyliannol a Canterbury a Gredditch yn y gwybod rydyn ni'n iawn, a rydyn ni'n gallu'r cyllid Llywodraeth yn y Maerthoddau a Llywodraeth i ddau'r 11 ym Mhwng. A gennyn ni'n gwybod o'r Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i gael y Llywodraeth, ychydig ymwneud ar gyfer y Llywodraeth, mae'r archiologi yn ymlaen, ac i ddod yma mae'n gweithio ar y Llywodraeth yma, Rwy'n ddweud ei ddysgu'r rhaglen yng Nghymru yng Nghymru yn Yn Llywodraeth Ndol yw Llywodraeth Cymru? Felly mae'r Llywodraeth Cymru yn gwybod hwnnw i'r gyllid i'r Panffordd Rhaglen yng Nghymru, ddangos i'r ganlymu'r panffordd Rhaglen yng nghymru yn y Cymru 15 yma, a gweld gan y ddweud i'r rhaglen yng nghymru ei ddweud i'r casu arweithio. Yno'r cethedrwyl argylliddoriaeth? So, mae'r cyfyrdd yma yn ymellafol yn y deunydd yma. Ond yw, mae'r cyfyrdd yma sydd yn ffeinio'r ddweud o'r argyflodiad ar y cethedrwyll a'u cyfyrdd yma yw'r amlwg o'r bwysig o'r ddweud o'r argyflodiad yma. Mae'r cymaint o'r rôl yn nhw'n bwysig o'r argyflodiad a'r clyweddau. ac yn ysgrifennu gyda'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i'r amgylcheddau a'r cyfnod yn ysgrifennu cyd-dŷlwyd. Mae'r ddweud yn ddweud yn ddweud yn ddweud yn ddweud yn ddweud yn ddweud. O'r ddweud yn ddweud, ddim o'r gweld y gwirioneddau fynd i'r gweithio'n ddweud, mae'n arweithio'n ddechrau, yn ysgrifennu. Mae'r cyfrnod mewn cyfrnod ar gyfer y cyfrnod, mae'n rhaid i'r tyn bwyth, I'm going to talk a bit about the Canterbury journey, which is a very large project currently under way at the cathedral and touch on some other projects also under way and I'm going to finish by looking at Thomas Beckett and some of the commemorations and research that is under way given the significant anniversary we have at the cathedral this year. So a quick show of hands has everyone been to Canterbury Cathedral? OK, well you know everything then I'll just get my coat in that and I'll hide away. So as you will know it's an incredibly complex building. The phase plans are both beautiful and complicated. They are a joy to work with. Understanding this very long chronology of the building has formed a big part of my work since I started as the Cathedral Archaeologist at Canterbury, which was about three and a half years ago. So there is a huge amount to understand. There is a huge amount to unpick within the built fabric. There is everything standing from the late 11th century all the way through to the modern period in the 20th and 21st centuries. So there is a complex sequence of an enormous 3D jigsaw puzzle to tussle with. Now of course as well underneath all of that we have the remains of even earlier activity at the site of Canterbury. This is my only slide covering the Roman period. I am not a specialist in the Roman period. Evidence has been revealed by Canterbury Archaeological Trust through excavations at the site in a number of locations for Roman activity at the site. So we are within the walled circuit of the Roman town of Canterbury. So there is evidence for routeways. There is evidence for structures. In particular these are rather beautiful third century artifacts recovered from excavations in the area of St Gabriel's Cathedral. So very close to the current cathedral building. And they possibly indicate a temple on the site there. So evidence for religious or ritual activity at Canterbury potentially stretches all the way back into the Roman period. And that's the Romans ladies and gentlemen. Also underneath the present cathedral building large scale excavations during the 1990s again by Canterbury Archaeological Trust revealed the substantial remains of the Anglo-Saxon building. So here we are looking a long way down at the excavations in the nave. And you can see the curve there of the part of the western apps of the building. This has been fully published in a monograph by Paul Bennett and Kevin Blockley from 1997. And it is a fantastic detailed account of all of the different evidence they found for the Anglo-Saxon cathedral, the Norman cathedral and subsequent alterations to those structures. Just to pick out one beautiful find from those excavations and there were many. But this one is certainly one of my favourites. This is one of only four Anglo-Saxon tiles that have been recovered from the cathedral site. And just starts to give us that little bit of an insight into how these buildings were decorated, what the interiors might have looked like. And this is now within the cathedral collections. We had another glimpse of part of the Anglo-Saxon building earlier last year during excavations in the cloister. So while this may look somewhat unprepossessing, that is Anglo-Saxon fabric that we are looking at. So it is part of an Anglo-Saxon turret or stair tower to the northwest corner of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral. Now the proposal in this space is to install an access lift between the cloister, which is several steps down from modern ground level. So it will enable greater sort of visitor access to this part of the building. So we will have to potentially remove a very small part of some of this Anglo-Saxon foundation in order to be able to allow the installation of the lift mechanism. So just to put that part of the archaeology in context, here is the Anglo-Saxon cathedral as exposed during the 1990s excavations. And here you see the blue is the Norman Northwest Tower. So our site is just up here within this box and you see the shape of the tower that was exposed. So we have part of that, who is more fully exposed within the nave excavations here on the southwest side and is still preserved under the present day floor. So the cloister is, well I mean every bit of Canterbury Cathedral is interesting frankly, but the cloister, just to focus on that for a moment, was used during the post medieval period as a burying place as a cemetery site. So you can see from this 18th century engraving, 19th century engraving we had upright gravestones in situ, which was still there in this very early photograph from 1904 held by the Kent Archaeological Society. What you might also notice is that the level of the ground surface here has been raised through that process of burying in this space. So in the 1930s there was a program of ground reduction in the cloister garth and that revealed this. Now this as far as I'm aware is a unique Anglo-Saxon item. It is a portable sundial dating to around the 10th century. If you visited the British Library's Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition last year you may have seen this on display. It was within that exhibition. This is a wonderful and very puzzling artifact. Its context is really interesting because it appears to have come out of those top layers of soil within the cloister garth. So within the post medieval disturbance one might say, and yet it has survived with not only the main body of it attached, but also with its nomen, I think this is called, which is what allows you to use it as a sundial. So this slots into these little holes at the top here. You've got the months of the year on either side and you have a dedication to both the maker and the possessor around the edge of the artifact itself. A particularly interesting thing about this artifact is that apparently, and again I'm quoting the work of others here, this sundial is designed to be used at a latitude that is significantly north of Canterbury Cathedral, so somewhere around Hexham is the suggestion. So what is it doing in the cloister garth cemetery soils? How did it manage to stay all together? And why is it in the south of England when it appears to have been something that would have functioned much more accurately at latitudes further north? So this artifact will be going on display as part of the Canterbury Journey project during 2020 and it will be within the water tower. It's a new space that will be opening to the public and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Another space that will be opening to the public for use as an exhibition space, or a refurbished exhibition space, is in the crypt. So here you see again members from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust at work preparing the area for the laying of a new floor in this space. And as I mentioned right at the beginning, this is one of the areas where we have some of the earliest fabrics surviving in the building. So the rear wall here is part of Land Frank's building so that takes us back to the 11th century and they are looking here at the later extension in the late 11th and early 12th century by Anselm. So we can see the sleeper walls of the crypt underway here. One of the artifacts that is going on display in this space is this which is a beautiful, unique 15th century pilgrim badge which was found on the Thames foreshore by Mudlarka Tony Theera. It's an incredible opportunity to be able to display a pilgrim badge depicting the martyrdom of Beckett just metres from the space where that event actually happened. And this photo was taken I think just a day or so after Tony had found the badge on site. So you can see that the preservation of that artifact is amazing. So turning to that sort of post Beckett period, a lot of what we see in the eastern arm of the cathedral relates to reconstruction of the building after a very, very dramatic and possibly suspiciously well timed fire in 1174. So Beckett was martyred in 1170. Pilgrimage grows through this period visiting his tomb in the crypt. There is a very severe fire in 1174 and then a huge program of rebuilding subsequent to that which completes in the 13th century. So here we're looking at a view of the eastern arm taken from the pulpitum screen. So we're looking straight down towards where the shrine of Beckett was and the corona chapel right at the end. So a huge amount of work has been undertaken by the Centre for Christianity and Culture at the University of York to help us try and picture that space. So this is a reconstruction showing what the shrine might have looked like in around 1408. And you can see the sort of decorative elements including the bejeweled shrine here, the cosmati pavement on the floor, the marble steps that lead up to the shrine. The floor of the Trinity Chapel has been studied in detail by Tim Tatton Brown and there is a fantastic article looking at the historic floor. In a book about medieval tiles, medieval floor surfaces generally and there is much more work still to be done to fully understand some of the aspects of the construction of that floor. Other research that has recently taken place at the cathedral, which you may have seen in the news, has been the work by Leonie Selinger and Rachel Coopmans looking at the stained glass within that eastern arm. So looking at some of the miracle windows which are in place in honour of Thomas Beckett and the wonders that come from his martyrdom. So Leonie and Rachel's work has been unpeaking the glass itself and understanding which fragments of which there are substantial survivals from that late 12th and early 13th century original construction and which parts are the sort of later replacements during the Victorian period, but demonstrating that these are some of the earliest depictions of pilgrims coming to Canterbury. And of course there has been a huge amount of work to understanding the fabric of that 1180s to 1220s rebuild in particular again by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust and just to pick out one example of a detailed piece of recording undertaken by Rupert Austin, who is their specialist buildings archaeologist there. This is the south oculus window here, which is part of that 1180s rebuild and it retains, astonishingly, its original ferramenta, which are the iron bars that hold the glazing in place. And this is Rupert's exploded view of how that ferramenta fits together and how it will work. So a really beautiful piece of building recording and understanding that 12th century engineering which is amazing and it's still there and it still works, still a window. So, nearly exactly 700 years after the suspicious fire of 1174, we do have another record of a fire in the eastern arm and I just quoted here from the London Illustrated News on September 14th, 1872. It says the fire which destroyed the roof of the east end of Canterbury Cathedral on Tuesday week and which threatened the entire destruction of that venerable building was mentioned in our last publication. It was caused by the upsetting of a pot of burning charcoal used by the plumbers employed to solder the leaden covering of the roof. The molten lead poured through to the woodwork below and the roof in that part was soon on fire. So it has echoes of that 12th century event and also of course echoes of a much more recent event. We all have seen last year's terrible fires at Notre Dame so it's certainly something that is in the forefront of everyone's mind when undertaking a major infrastructure project. Also within the archive we have examples of a very early sampling strategy. So amongst other items kept from 1872 we have this which is the fuse lead from the original roof from the fire of 1872. So within that programme of rebuilding, reconstruction, putting the roof back on there were samples taken which are now lodged within the library and archives from the building. So pieces of masonry and lead and glass. So I mentioned at the beginning of the talk that we are currently in the middle of a very large infrastructure project at Canterbury Cathedral. This is called The Canterbury Journey and it is a £25 million project so a very substantial piece of work. We have the timeline of the project there in the middle. We are about here so we are just well over halfway through an enormous project. Now the picture on this side of the screen here is to show you the safety deck that is above the nave presently to allow work to take place to those upper levels of the building but has also been used for art installations over the last couple of years. This is a commemorative art installation relating to the events of World War I and those were all glass and for hanging from the roof deck there. So The Canterbury Journey comprises a number of different elements. It includes the creation of new exhibition spaces and interpretation which we have touched upon already. Exterior works to the nave and the western towers of the cathedral. Wide-ranging landscaping and infrastructure works, a new welcome centre, a shop and a community space and conservation work to the Christchurch gate. So the cathedral presently looks like this which can be quite a surprise when you come in the Christchurch gate. There is a lot of scaffolding across the whole of the western half of the building. It can be quite noisy and it is to all intents and purposes a working site as well as remaining open to anyone who would like to come and visit. Now obviously reactions tend to be mixed so if you have waited your whole life to come to Canterbury Cathedral and you are not appreciative of the scaffolding this might be your response. I should add that this is from this august publication so it is not a real piece of visitor impact. But it is worth reflecting of course that this is not the first time that this building has been a construction site. You don't have buildings as big as this without requiring considerable amounts of repair and conservation works regularly in order to retain the fabric and make sure that everything is safe. So it is worth contemplating that while we are on our own Canterbury journey, Chaucer's pilgrims heading their way to Canterbury in the late 14th century similarly would have been faced with a building in various stages of construction. This is yet another reconstruction drawing from the University of York again in the early years of the 15th century and shows scaffolding to that central part of the building there. This is now where Bell Harry is so the rebuilding of the angel tower and parts of the northern range here. If you haven't come across these reconstruction drawings before they are all available online and I do encourage you to look at them. The work that has gone into creating these is incredible and what we were looking at was a zoomed in view actually that this particular image includes the whole of the walled town of Canterbury. Looking at the city in its early 15th century phase so looking at the individual buildings and you can zoom in and have a look at all these different spaces. We have St Augustine's here and also St Martin's right at the top of the view so we have the World Heritage Site also depicted on this image. The view we looked at before with the glass amphora and the shape of a ship was immediately below where we see this image. Here we are up on the top of the safety deck and we are looking at the nave vaults so an amazing opportunity to get up close and personal with that part of the late 14th, early 15th century building. Obviously an opportunity to undertake conservation work, repair work and a huge amount of recording. We have looked at the 12th century end of the building, just have a quick look at the later parts. The cloister as well was largely reconstructed in the late 14th century. This roof boss is said to depict Henry Yeevely who was one of the master masons of the period and he worked at Canterbury. Here is a view of that cloister just showing the major rebuild of the space. We are looking here down the southern walk so that is the entrance to the martyrdom at the end there. Through the 15th century we had further building works at the western end of the cathedral including fan vaulting, installed in the Lady Chapel and in the south west tower. The pulpitum screen similarly dates from 1450s to 1460s so the construction of the major division between the monastic areas of the church and the more public spaces in the nave. Finishing up here in the 1490s with the fan vaulting installed below the Bell Harry. This is all just to reiterate the point that the Canterbury journey, while its impact visually is quite large, is certainly not something that is historically without precedent at this site. One of the last major building programmes was the Christchurch gate so completed in probably around 1570, 1520. If not the last major building programme right before the dissolution. Here we are looking at a mid 18th century view by Grimm so we are standing within the precincts looking back at the Christchurch gate and it just gives us that little glimpse of the precinct buildings as well. Plus some of the activities that were possibly taking place so we have a mason's workshop, people chatting and quite a lot of dog walking who would appear. So the Christchurch gate is the part of the Canterbury journey project that has most recently started so scaffolding has just gone up and the main works to this space are again external repairs and in particular conservation work to some of the painted elements of the gate. The interior is equally as interesting so we have done a brief assessment of that space. We have quite a lot of historic graffiti in there including some dating to the period of the Civil War when we know that people were occupying that space. And some very interesting artefacts which I came across in the archives the other day which I am going to save to another lecture because they are something quite special. So the works to the exterior of the building as I mentioned have been substantial so the nave roof essentially has come off and gone back on again. As you can see a huge amount of working at height so repairs to the stonework of the north west and south west towers right from the pinnacles of the building all the way down. And here you see Leanne Harter from Purcell Architects Alex Bovey from the Courtauld and Heather Newton who is our director of conservation during a site visit. And that's me. I wasn't quite brave enough to go all the way up to the very top. I really should given I got all the way up there. We've also been looking at the access to those roof spaces and looking at infrastructure which is now defunct on those roof spaces. So this is the bell frame on the top of the St Dunstan's Tower the south west tower which as you can see when the lead was removed it was beyond salvage so it has been recorded it has been removed and I believe parts of it were recycled into pens I think was the approach taken there. The bell is no longer housed there so it is a feature of the building which has been changed. So another part of the works at height has been looking at the rainwater goods and bearing in mind the vagaries of our modern weather there needs to be some consideration as to how water is circuited around the building. Now there appears to have been a significant phase of work to the rainwater goods in the middle part of the 18th century so we had a whole series of lead hoppers dated 1760 at triforium level which had been installed by basically removing parts of earlier masonry and sticking them in is the best way of putting it. So these have been reconfigured and for the first time in many many many years masons at Canterbury have been working on new garg oils of which these. So these are designed in part to echo the carving of the bosses in the nave vaults so we see a lot of animals being used in some of the heraldry in that space so these are in part a reflection of those. Turning to the nave space, I hope it's a bit hard to make this one out but this is a brilliant piece of recording work by Rupert Austin and his team this was funded by the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral and what we are looking at is a record of mason's marks in the nave vaults so hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of marks recorded across the walls and the vaults themselves which Rupert's expert analysis allows us to draw some conclusions so the next slide quotes from his report and I do apologise because I've missed a sentence off at the bottom but you will get the general idea so the sort of highlights of his research indicate that at least 55 mason's made a significant contribution to the construction of this area within a relatively short time frame some of those marks were concentrated within the sort of central parts of the structure and he's suggesting that basically the build moved in from the eastern and western extremities and met in the middle which is a bold architectural strategy there the severy which he mentions there is this area here right at the western end and it appears to have been the last space that was completed also appears to have been used as an area where the mason's were working things out so we do have a couple of architectural sketches on the wall here another really fantastic discovery from Rupert's work is the evidence for reuse of stone so a number of the stones were marked twice with two different mason's marks we think they were recycling the Norman fabric into that later 14th and 15th century fabric and they were marking them up so one mark is the original 12th century mason's mark and the other is the 14th century mason's mark clocking them in and out so turning to the landscaping works essentially the area that is being landscaped is this so this is the Christchurch gate this is the western end of the cathedral this is Cathedral House in here and we have the study centre and conference centre and lodge over here so a substantial area of landscaping and also impact into this part of the southern precincts as well so just to compare in terms of area we've just overlaid here the extent of the nave excavations in the 1990s so you'll see this is a substantial project at Canterbury so what is that work is entailed it's to do with improving the below ground infrastructure so looking at drainage, looking at services so one of the first pieces of work was a long narrow trench along that south part of the precincts which encountered the remains of parts of the medieval drainage system as well as over 100 inhumations so this is the part of the site that was used as the lay cemetery throughout the medieval period and some of the deeper excavations some of the borehole shafts did encounter Anglo-Saxon burials and extended into Roman archaeology Roman archaeology was also encountered as part of the works to the new welcome centre so here is a photo from just last week I think this is the new community space this is the entrance and the shop and welcome just here and here is the Christchurch gate so a huge amount of planning and mitigation went into the construction here trying to cause as little damage to the surviving layers of archaeology as possible in terms of how the foundations of the building were set and looking at limiting those deeper interventions the deepest interventions were within the area of the lift shaft in this building and they again did encounter Roman archaeology and Canterbury Archaeological Trust are still working through all the reports for these various phases of intervention like the scaffolding really the most visible intervention to the spaces is the landscaping works and here is a photo from probably a couple of years ago now showing one of the earlier phases of work so again infrastructure, drainage, services and laying of a new surface so bringing some uniformity to those western parts of the cathedral precincts new planting as well in some places obviously all of that means an enormous opportunity for archaeological investigation and it really obviously is not every day that you get to dig around the western end of Canterbury cathedral so here is a photo of the trust at the west end so just outside these are the offices of the survey to the fabric Purcell architects and you can see much disturbed so we have a lot of truncation on this site but there is evidence for post medieval buildings in this area some medieval buildings as well of particular interest is this wall this marks the boundary between the cathedral precincts and the Archbishop's Palace so this is a very significant landscape feature in the past which does not exist in our modern view and as the excavations have moved or the landscaping has moved further to the north we are now within the area of the Archbishop's Palace right within his precinct and starting to look at some of his buildings so just a couple of artefacts to highlight from here this one is a bread token so this is a bread token dating from around 1656 and I'm indebted to Francis Morgan from Canterbury Archaeological Trust for this information so bread tokens of this kind were often minted in lieu of coinage during the 17th century another lovely find is this Nuremberg jeton so it's a Hans Krawwinkel II so dating from around 1580s to the 1630s and most appropriately for an artefact like this found where it was the legend on it says God's Kingdom enduws forever so it's a very wonderful thing to have found in this space so we're starting to build a picture of that post medieval activity at the western end of the cathedral both in the public spaces so places that would have been used as shops or informal market places places that people are visiting they're dropping items places that people are living as well so in the excavations in the welcome centre we have evidence for the backs of houses and drainage and cess pits and some evidence as well as I mentioned for the actual construction of the Archbishop's Palace here so this wall which is right outside the present old palace gates is part we think or Canterbury Archaeological Trust things Phil Main their site supervisor and Alison Hicks have been assessing the archaeology from this site and have identified this fragment as part of the Elizabethan Archbishop's Palace so reconstructed by Archbishop Parker and he was able to host Queen Elizabeth for her grand dinner for her 40th birthday in the Archbishop's Palace at Canterbury in the 1570s William Urie who is the archivistic Canterbury Cathedral during the 1960s also found these there are two of these drawings in the Bodleian Library these are from 1683 and show the western end of the cathedral the Archbishop's Palace so we possibly have part of this wall here various boundary walls running through here and buildings on the site in the 17th century and Tim Tatton Brown has done a huge amount of work on the earlier medieval Palace as well we should note through excavations in the 1970s so looking at the phasing and the very very grand buildings that formed part of the Palace during the medieval period of course the Palace is just one of a network of buildings and palaces that were used by the Archbishop's during the medieval period and we've already mentioned Null realised I'm going to have to go faster so coming back to the cloister excavations so we looked at the Anglo-Saxon Tower before above it were the remains of a medieval tiled surface which was lifted early last year by Dana Goodburn Brown and Marie here Emma Norton from the Cathedral's Conservation Department and Jess from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust and within a very very small amount of satigraphy sort of 300, 400 mil we have everything from Victorian archaeology right the way down to Anglo-Saxon they very kindly let me join in as well so we lifted all of the tiles by hand they were packaged with a protective layer of clay and they are now being conserved by Emma in the Cathedral Conservation Studio so this tile floor is extremely interesting it is comprised of fleur de lis pattern tiles and plain black tiles we also have this which we'll turn to in a moment which may be a later insertion those particular kinds of tiles and the other one we're going to look at in more detail are dated to the late 13th to early 14th century so they actually well they represent one of two things they are either a refloring of the Norman cloister or they are a recycling of older tiles in the 14th century cloister one or the other but they are an in situ tile floor which we've had a little glimpse into this is a close up of that one I just mentioned earlier this is a probable pilgrim tile again similar sort of date again Tyler Hill manufacturer which is just north of Canterbury and there are comparative examples found from other places in the country this one is recorded from Bedfordshire on the portable antiquities scheme so here is the area this week so the paving has been reinstated well the next phase of the work is undertaken preparing that area for the lift access and we're going to touch on graffiti just now as a cloister is one of the most heavily graffitied areas in the cathedral I mean there's a lot of graffiti I'm going to talk quite a lot about graffiti actually now quite often when you hear about graffiti in these kind of spaces it's acknowledged as being something that pilgrims might have done now pilgrims wouldn't have had access to this space this is part of the monastic space and part of the ecclesiastical space until at least the 17th century so probably not that much medieval pilgrim graffiti the other thing you might have heard about graffiti is that it's the work of school boys in this instance actually we can say that is the case for some of these graffiti so this one here by Blacksland Blacksland was a pupil at the King School next door and Peter Henderson the archivist at King School has done a huge amount of work in marrying up the records of the King School boys with some of the named graffiti in the cathedral Blacksland went on to be an explorer in Australia so he's relatively well known and this is a wonderful quote in Peter's article it says there can be no doubt that persons old or young or middle aged who commemorate themselves by inscribing their names or initials in churches or other historic buildings are highly reprensible yet the antiquarian is bound to admit that time may eventually confer interest upon such inscriptions even if it does not entirely exculpate the original offenders so we come down to this question of when how old does graffiti have to be for it to be interesting there is a huge amount of research and undertaken an investigation into graffiti at Canterbury Cathedral so all the way back into the middle part of the 19th century people were noticing these marks on the wall so the inaugural meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute in the British Archaeological Association took place in Canterbury in 1844 and a paper was read by Mr Godwin on certain marks of the masons many of which he had also recognised in Canterbury Cathedral more from the Royal Archaeological Institute there are a number of very large scale inscriptions particularly in the crypt and in the Trinity Chapel and these as well have been described in the late Victorian period so we have a quote here traced out by shallow lines filled with modern colour our Lord seated in glory and given the bed addiction surrounded by the emblems of the four evangelists and that is the graffiti or the scheme that is currently preserved under glass there and has been for at least 100 years I think so it has been recognised and assigned a significance here in the Society of Antiquaries itself we have these records by Charles Elam Undated which are a catalogue of medieval masons marks all the way round the cathedral so perhaps something to compare with Rupert's work in the Naive Vaults and in the 1960s William Murray so here he is, the cathedral archivist encouraged two school boys from King's school to undertake their own graffiti survey the horseful Turner brothers appeared to have been given a key and told to go to it and they produced a really fantastic archive which is held in their collections at the cathedral today so we have a series of notebooks describing their discoveries and some spectacularly well drawn sight plans with numbered allocations to all of the items that they found so the Canterbury journey is currently leading a project to record, re-record the inscriptions within that eastern crypt area so it certainly would appear that the sign here has not worked in any way so we're just going to have a quick look at a few examples of graffiti so we're starting with this and I'm not sure if you can see it clearly but it says, Ken and Vera none better and is possibly my first spot of a graffiti motorbike and also a graffiti cup of tea so these are the things that are important to Ken and Vera we have records from World War II so periods of conflict quite often result in increased amounts of graffiti so potentially able to identify individuals from these kinds of initials and dates and field units Ethelbert White from 1864 is indeed again very very clear he may again be associated with King's school this is in the Water Tower with a depiction of Dover Castle on the walls of the south transept we have a large number of these 18th century memorials we think they are and this one is extremely deeply incised and very obvious so it certainly reminds us of this idea that up until the 19th century and into the 20th century graffiti was both accepted and acceptable so it's quite okay to leave your mark please don't take that as license to go and do that not the case now we have lots of examples I don't know if you can see how this compass drawn design just here this is on an 18th century memorial so obviously shows that the creation of those kind of marks continues all the way into the post medieval period and massively exciting this one has something in it so we might even have the compass point in there and I have resisted the temptation to just take it and have a look at it we have architectural sketches again so this is from the treasury undercroft and some work by Matthew Champion in the area of the new organ loft build construction in the North Choir Isle has revealed possibly we think maybe some kind of astrological symbols here and also a lot of pre-reformation text there is pre-reformation text all over the building there are some lovely parallels to be drawn between the graffiti and manuscript illustrations potentially so again we are in the North Choir Isle here and this one again from the North Choir Isle and this was posted just recently by Alison Ray the assistant archivist and I'm indebted to her for the reference now this door is a clumsy way of me linking into the last part of this talk to remind me that this is a doorway into the final part of the talk but also just to contemplate that 12th century period this is a composite door so the C shaped ironwork that you see here dates to around 1130 the timber and the strap work dates to around well dates to 1175 so parts of this door are something that Thomas Beckett himself could have seen and parts of this door relate to that reconstruction of the building after the fire post his martyrdom so we're just going to use the last few minutes of this talk to think about Thomas Beckett this year as I mentioned is a hugely significant year for the cathedral it is 850 years since his martyrdom in the north transept here and 800 years since his translation from the tomb in the crypt up to the Trinity Chapel itself and on the other side of the slide here you just see this is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is a depiction of Thomas Beckett's martyrdom from around 1400 it's very appropriate to be talking about Thomas in London because Thomas was a Londoner so we see the quote here from William Fitz Stephen who knew him Saint Thomas adorned both these cities London by his rising and Canterbury by his setting and this is the seal of London this is from the Museum of London dating to the early 13th century and shows Thomas Beckett in Splendour so he is very much associated with both London and Canterbury so just to reflect on his London roots this is a reconstruction by Museum of London Archaeology showing the area around number one poultry in around 1100 Thomas Beckett was born probably somewhere just up around here in around 1120 so this is the street scene that Thomas Beckett might have known he also as well would have known the site at Lambeth and we see here a quote from Tim Tatton Brown below during the middle years of the 12th century it's very likely that the Archbishop's London house at Lambeth was considerably enlarged unfortunately no 12th century buildings have survived so unlike Canterbury where we have a good understanding of that 12th century palace site Lambeth remains largely unknown at that period however foundations may well be found so that's something to look out for and Thomas as well is also very much commemorated in the day-to-day landscape of 13th century and later London so at his birthplace we have the church of St Thomas in the order of St Thomas Acon on London Bridge itself there was a medieval chapel dedicated to St Thomas you see the bridge here in the background and at the front of the picture here this is St Thomas's tower at the tower of London constructed in the late 13th century and of course St Thomas's hospital at what is now Southern Cathedral but was at Mary Overy's Priory is also a dedication to Thomas Beckett so he would have been very much in that medieval London landscape so moving back to Canterbury just a quick examination of some of the parts of the building that Thomas himself would have known so these are parts of the building that were we know already in situ by 1170 and includes some of even the decorative elements of the building so these wall paintings from St Gabriel's Chapel would have been there during Beckett's lifetime he also would have recognised parts of the upstanding fabric so here we're looking at the routeway from the crypt to the lower part of the water tower so again mid 11th century building construction here as is the treasury building again on the northern side of the cathedral shown in this historic photo where someone appears to have got their hat or something in the corner of it there so we are incredibly lucky to have a depiction of Canterbury in around 1150, 1160 at the cathedral this is the waterworks drawing and shows it gives us a huge amount of information about that 12th century building so it shows the roots of the waterworks and the piscina here at Fishpond at the end shows you which water is fresh, which water is draining away this is the water tower shown in large scale here just to highlight the importance here is the treasury building here and this is the eastern end of the building so here you see a square-ended chapel at the eastern terminus and that is where Thomas Beckett was buried in the crypt immediately after his martyrdom so this is Robert Willis' plan of that pre-1174 building and showing this square-ended chapel now this is not proven by excavation the sort of dimensions of that chapel and is a relatively small space to be packing in up to 90,000 pilgrims annually by the late years of the 12th century so it certainly gives us that indication as to why there is such a substantial rebuilding on such a huge scale so an examination of the surviving fabric here is proving to be very very interesting this is the 1408 again reconstruction by the University of York showing that post-rebuilding phase so after Thomas has been translated upstairs it still remains a site of pilgrimage and people are still visiting we understand the original tomb site in the crypt and potentially spending quite long periods of time there as well so I've come to the end of my talk here we're looking at another view of Tony's wonderful pilgrim badge and I'd just like to thank you for having me here again today