Visitor’s guide to St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury
Most people head for the main Cathedral when they are visiting Canterbury, but if you want to visit and even older building and find peace and contemplation, I suggest you go to St Augustine’s Abbey instead. I’ve visited several times over the years and it’s always been a great day out.
I suppose I’ve always enjoyed visiting historic abbeys. It’s partly the cut away nature of the ruins that allows more than a slice of the imagination to fill in the gaps. Castles are all very well, but trying to picture the life of medieval monks does require a certain amount of contemplation.
In reality, there were often relatively few monks and it was the lay brothers and others who did most of the actual work, required to support a lifetime of prayer and remembrance.
The St Augustine’s Abbey is definitely one of the best places to see in Canterbury and it’s a pleasant place to stop and pause for a little, walk around the old ruins and grassy banks, which are just a stone’s throw from the centre of the modern city.
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What to see at St Augustine’s Abbey
The abbey is large, but it’s mainly small ruins of the outer walls of the original church, cloisters and crypt. The walkways around the ruins give you a good idea how the abbey would have looked like, but you do need to use your imagination. You can see all the abbey ruins, but the buildings that are now part of the King’s School are not accessible to public. You can walk around from the outside and look through the gates to see some of the buildings.
There is also a small museum introducing the abbey’s history and also displaying various artefacts found during excavations, including a skeleton of a woman. You can also try the new virtual reality experience, which re-creates the whole abbey for you – it’s quite fun and it’s easier to imagine the abbey when you walk outside.
My tip – If you have the time, I’d definitely recommend to take the audio guide with you, when you walk around the site. There are explanation panels, but they are not that detailed, so the audio guide really helps to tell the story of the abbey. I always enjoy listening to the different stories and since I already know the site quite well, I usually sit on one bench looking at the abbey and jabbing one number after another to listen to the commentary!
Also don’t miss the little hill in the far end of the abbey grounds. It’s called the Campanile mound and from there you get splendid views of both the abbey ruins and Canterbury Cathedral in the distance.
Practical information for visiting St Augustine’s Abbey
Tickets
Adult tickets are priced at £9.50, while tickets for children aged 5-17 years cost £5.50. There’s also a concession price of £8.50 and you can opt-in to give an extra £1 as a donation with your ticket.
English Heritage members get in for free, so if you’re planning to visit multiple heritage sites, it might be worth considering membership. Individual membership starts from £72 per year (or £6 per month) or £126 for a joint adult ticket (2 people living at the same address). There are further options for family tickets, seniors and even life membership.
There is also a so-called ‘Overseas Visitors Pass’ which is valid for 9 or 16 days and is specifically for foreign tourists visiting UK. The pass is valid for the time you specify and you can visit the best (and biggest) 100 English Heritage Properties in the UK.
The cost of ‘Overseas Visitors Pass’ starts from £47 for one person for 9 days (or £56 for 16 days) or £83 for 2 adults for 9 days (or £94 for 16 days for 2 people). Family rates are £94 for 9 days and £105 for 16 days. You can see that there is only a small difference between the 9 or 16 days, which makes the 16 days ticket super good value.
You can also pre-book your ticket online in advance and save 15%
Admission to St Augustine’s Abbey includes an informative audio tour, available in English, French, and Japanese.
Opening Times
- April to October: Open daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.
- November to March: Open on weekends only, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
Accessibility
Whilst the abbey grounds don’t have many steps and the main uneven part has a wooden walkway accessible by a wheelchair, there are areas that have steps and don’t have wheelchair access. The whole area has either grass or stoned paths, but no specifically made and kept paths.
Apart from the tiny hill on the side of the abbey, the grounds are pretty much flat and easy to walk around. There are wooden benches around the grounds and also wooden tables and chairs next to the entrance building with the museum and ticket office.
How long to allocate for your visit
This very much depends on how much you want to know about the abbey and if you want to listen to the audio guide. In my experience, it takes about 45 min – 60 minutes to walk around the grounds whilst listening to the audio guide (there are lots of extra details in the audio guide on top of the 14 official stops around the abbey grounds).
There is also the small introduction museum, which can take about 20 minutes. On top of that you can also try the new visual reality set, that takes you around the abbey as it was in it’s heyday.
Saying that, if you don’t want to do the audio tour, you can easily walk around the whole grounds in 15-20 minutes. If you are very short of time, you can also see most of the abbey before you get to the ticket office as you enter the grounds. So, if you just want to have a quick look without paying, you can also do that.
How to get to St. Augustine’s Abbey
St Augustine’s Abbey is outside the Canterbury city walls in Longport street, just off the off the A257 road and close to Broad Street. If you are arriving by train, Canterbury West station is about a mile away.
The abbey is well-signposted if you are walking from the city centre, and there’s paid parking available opposite the site if you are arriving by car. There is no free English Heritage car park, so it’s better to come by public transport if you can.
Facilities
There is no cafe at the abbey, but the grounds have a picnic area for visitors and you are welcome to bring your own picnic or refreshments. A gift shop on-site has hot and cold drinks, snacks, and ice creams. There are few local shops and tearooms just opposite the abbey or it’s only about 10 minutes walk back to the centre of Canterbury.
History of St. Augustine’s Abbey
St Augustine’s Abbey was founded in 598 AD by St. Augustine and it played a crucial role in the spread of Christianity across the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. St Augustine with about 40 other monks was sent by Pope Gregory I to convert the English to Christianity.
I love the fact that St. Augustine left Rome for his mission and two months later he went back to see the Pope to tell him he changed his mind. Pope didn’t really take ‘no’ for an answer, gave him promotion to bishop and told him to carry on with the job! It took St. Augustine nine months to get from Rome to Ramsgate where he landed to meet the Kent king Ethelbert.
The king gave St. Augustine permission to built a church in Canterbury (now the main Canterbury cathedral) and also gave him plot of land just outside the town, which is where the abbey is now.
The abbey was initially a modest wooden structure, but it quickly evolved into a much large building with church, cloister and outer buildings, reflecting its growing importance.
The abbey was also a burial place. Apart from St Augustine himself, it’s also the burial place of his successors, Saints, Lawrence, Mellitus and Justus. There also space for early Saxon kings, such as Ethelbert’s tower and Queen Bertha, commemorated by a Queen-in gate.
The Normans extended the original church and the twin western towers were the last to be completed by Abbot Hugh I in 1120. At the time the Abbey and the Cathedral, both Benedictine houses would have looked similar. The ruins of the chapel of St Pancras are partly built of Roman brick and thought to date from the 7th century. The built up remains of Abbot Wulfric’s rotunda are also clearly visible and just pre-date the Norman Conquest.
At the Dissolution, the church was largely torn down with stone being transported across the Channel to aid the defences of the castle at Calais.
The Abbey became a sort of royal staging post on the London to Dover route as can be seen from Tudor brickwork above the blocked up Norman arcades on the north aisle. Work must have been completed in double quick time, because Anne of Cleeves stayed there in 1539 on her way to an ill fated marriage with Henry VIII.
This and not the cathedral was the original centre of Christianity in England. Overlooking the cathedral, the Abbey was itself overlooked and its significance largely forgotten until the early nineteenth century. Close by is St Augustine’s College, built in the 1840’s to train missionaries across the Empire.
It was the college’s founders who were largely responsible for putting the Abbey back on the historic map and beginning restoration work. It’s now King’s School and is distinguished by an impressive Abbey Gate, (Fyndon’s Gate) built around 1300 by Abbot Fyndon.
Nearby is St Martin’s Church which can claim to be the oldest church in regular use in England since it’s though to even pre-date the building of the Abbey. The oldest parts of St Martin’s are probably Roman with Saxon additions. It’s certainly worth a visit as part of a trip to both Cathedral and Abbey.
This blog post was originally published on 17 February 2015 and last updated on 3 November 2024
