The story of the Cathedral at Canterbury began in 597, when Augustine, a monk from Rome, was sent by Pope Gregory to re-kindle Christianity in England. He was granted a piece of land on which to found a Church and it is probable that our present Cathedral now stands on that very spot. Augustine also established an Abbey, now known as St Augustine's Abbey, just outside the city. There was already a small Church close by, dedicated to St Martin. These three institutions together are now inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
About 1000 the Cathedral became a monastery. In the year after the arrival of William the Conqueror, the Saxon Cathedral was burnt down and King William's Archbishop, Lanfranc, was enthroned amongst the ashes in 1070. Within seven years a new Romanesque Cathedral had been built and Canterbury retained its primary role within the Church and what was now a unified English nation. There were still the ever-present troubles and arguments between the monastery, the Archbishop, the King and the Pope. One such quarrel came to a head on December 29th 1170, when the Archbishop, Thomas Becket, was murdered in his own Cathedral. Thus began a huge movement of pilgrims to the Shrine of St Thomas, compared only with Jerusalem, Rome itself and Santiago de Compostela, bringing great wealth to the Priory.
In 1174 a fire destroyed the Romanesque Quire and, as a consequence, a new Gothic Quire was built, with the Trinity Chapel to the east to house a new Shrine for St Thomas. The Shrine is gone, but the Quire and chapel still remain. From 1377 to 1405 the Nave was replaced by the magnificent Perpendicular building we see today and in 1498 the Bell Harry Tower was completed bringing to an end the major building programme.
In 1538 King Henry VIII began the process of dissolving the monasteries following the refusal of the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1541 the old order of a Prior and Monks was replaced by a system of a Dean and Chapter to govern the Cathedral and so it has remained to this day.
St Augustine's Abbey, known originally as the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul, is situated to the east of the Cathedral outside the City Wall. It was consecrated by Augustine's successor, Laurentius, in 613. Unlike the early cathedral it was, from the first, a monastic community following the rule of St Benedict, intended to balance the active and outgoing life of Christ Church with the monastic emphasis on prayer and reflection. The Abbey church was also clearly intended as the royal and archiepiscopal mausoleum with the interment of Augustine and his immediate successors and many of the Kentish kings and their families until the collapse of the independent Kentish kingdom in the 760s. The site now contains only ruins with some important Anglo-Saxon remains including the 7th century church of St Pancras.
St Martin's Church, further to the east, is thought to have been originally a late Roman or post-Roman structure which was adapted in the 580s for Christian worship and was used by Queen Bertha and her chaplain, Bishop Luidhard. It has been in continuous use as a church ever since. Later, probably no later than the 7th century, the western half was rebuilt and the east end of the chancel is probably 12th or 13th century with the tower being built in the 14th century.