- published: 17 Dec 2010
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The City of Canterbury is a local government district with city status in Kent, England. The main settlement in the district is Canterbury, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The district was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of the existing city of Canterbury with the Whitstable and Herne Bay Urban Districts, and Bridge-Blean Rural District. The latter district entirely surrounded the city; the urban districts occupied the coastal area to the north.
Within the district are the towns of Herne Bay and Whitstable, which with the parishes and the cathedral city itself, make up the 'City of Canterbury' district. There are 26 parishes within the district, as follows:
Swalecliffe is an unparished area within the district.
The area is in the main rural, although the entire coastal strip is taken up by the almost unbroken sprawl of seaside towns from Seasalter, west of Whitstable, to Herne Bay, Kent. Between them and the city there is high land, well wooded, south of which the Great Stour flows from its source beyond Ashford. The city of Canterbury stands upon this river.
Coordinates: 51°16′30″N 1°05′13″E / 51.275°N 1.087°E / 51.275; 1.087
Canterbury (i/ˈkæntərbᵊri/ or /ˈkæntərbɛri/) is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour.
Originally a Brythonic settlement, it was renamed Durovernum Cantiacorum by the Roman conquerors in the 1st century AD. After it became the chief Jutish settlement, it gained its English name Canterbury, itself derived from the Old English Cantwareburh ("Kent people's stronghold"). After the Kingdom of Kent's conversion to Christianity in 597, St Augustine founded an episcopal see in the city and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a position that now heads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion (though the modern-day Province of Canterbury covers the entire south of England). Thomas Becket's murder at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 led to the cathedral becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide. This pilgrimage provided the theme for Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century literary classic The Canterbury Tales. The literary heritage continued with the birth of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in the city in the 16th century.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group of Christians in the world[citation needed].
The current archbishop is the Most Reverend Rowan Williams. He is the 104th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to St Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", in the year 597. From the time of St Augustine until the 16th century, the Archbishops of Canterbury were in full communion with the See of Rome and thus received the pallium. During the English Reformation the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, at first temporarily under Henry VIII and Edward VI and later permanently during the reign of Elizabeth I.
In the Middle Ages there was considerable variation in the methods of nomination of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops. At various times the choice was made by the canons of Canterbury Cathedral, the King of England, or the Pope. Since the English Reformation, the Church of England has been more explicitly a state church and the choice is legally that of the British crown; today it is made in the name of the Sovereign by the Prime Minister, from a shortlist of two selected by an ad hoc committee called the Crown Nominations Commission.