Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Trinity Chapel, also known as St. Thomas's Chapel, was the centre and final goal of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. Work on building a new east end to the Cathedral, after a disasterous fire in 1174, commenced in 1175 by William of Sens The French Mason.

Monument Types

• CHAPEL (Now, Medieval to Unknown - 1174 AD?)

Full description

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Trinity Chapel, also known as St. Thomas's Chapel, was the centre and final goal of the Canterbury Pilgrimage. Work on building a new east end to the Cathedral, after a disasterous fire in 1174, commenced in 1175 by William of Sens The French Mason. In 1179 he had a serious accident, falling from scaffolding and had to return home to France before he could complete the programme. Work was then taken over in 1179 and largely structurally completed by 1185 by Mason William the Englishman. The whole east end was finally completed in 1220 when new windows were inserted depicting the new shrine to St. Thomas Becket in the Trinity Chapel that year.

Here stood the shrine of Archbishop Thomas Becket, one of the great masterpieces of medieval art, consisting of gold-plated coffin mounted on a feretory, supported by marble pillars. The coffin was covered with every kind of precious object, deposited by pilgrims between 1170 and 1528. The Saint's remains were transferred in 1220 from the tomb in the Crypt, where they had rested since 1170. Almost nothing remains of the Shrine; Henry VIII destoyed it in 1538, confiscating all its riches; eight men could scarcely lift the chest of treasures carried off. Around its site there is a long shallow depression worn by the feet and knees of thousands of pilgrims performing their devotions here over centuries.

In 1376 the funeral of the Black Prince took place in great spendour in Canterbury Cathedral. He was buried immediately to the south of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in the Trinity Chapel. In 1396 Archbishop Wiiliam Courtenay was buried in Trinity Chapel just east of the Black Prince. In 1413 King Henry IV was buried immediately to the north of the shrine of Becket and his second wife Queen Joan of Navarre was buried beside him in 1437. Also buried within the chapel are Archbishop Hubert Walter died 1205 and Odet de Coligny, Cardinal de Chastillon who died in 1571, a member of a great French Protestant family.

Unknown, 1945, The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ, Canterbury, A Handbook for Pilgrims (Monograph). SKE30198.

Willett, C., 1960, Canterbury Cathedral A Pictorial Guide (Monograph). SKE29722.

John Newman, 1969, The Buildings of England: North East and East Kent (Monograph). SKE7874.

Blockley, K., Sparks, M. & Tatton-Brown, T., 1997, Canterbury Cathedral Nave, Archaeology, History and Architecture (Monograph). SKE29723.

Sources and further reading