Qualla: Canterbury Castle

Canterbury Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neddyseagoon (talk) (Uploads), CC BY 2.5. When the Norman conquest finished at Hastings on 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror marched on London. He took the obvious route - the old Roman road from Dover through Canterbury, the same road the Romans had built when they made Britain a province. He needed castles to hold that road. So he built three of them, at Dover, at Canterbury, and at Rochester, the three royal castles of Kent, raised as the conquest was still being consolidated. The Canterbury motte-and-bailey appeared as a wooden structure on a low mound in 1066. The mound may still survive - the rise in Dane John Gardens, near the surviving stone keep, may be that original motte. Or it may be a Roman burial mound. Or both. The name Dane John itself is a corruption of donjon, the Norman word for a castle keep. Eight centuries of language drift have softened the conqueror's word into a Kentish placename.

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Image: Neddyseagoon (talk) (Uploads) | CC BY 2.5

Canterbury Castle: Stone Walls, Henry I

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neddyseagoon (talk) (Uploads), CC BY 2.5. The great stone keep was largely built in the reign of Henry I, William's youngest son, who ruled from 1100 to 1135. It's a massive structure - about 98 by 85 feet at the base externally, originally probably at least 80 feet tall, built of flint and sandstone rubble. As one of th...

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Image: Neddyseagoon (talk) (Uploads) | CC BY 2.5

Canterbury Castle: The Governors and the Jail

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gulielmus Bild, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the early thirteenth century onward, Canterbury Castle was administered by a series of royal governors who were also responsible for the other Kentish castles. Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent - the great justiciar who served three kings and was perhaps the most powerful ma...

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Image: Gulielmus Bild | CC BY-SA 3.0

Canterbury Castle: Gas Storage and Slow Decline

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Dawes, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the nineteenth century, Canterbury Castle was an industrial site. A gas company acquired the keep and used it for many years as a storage centre for the gas that lit the streets and houses of Victorian Canterbury. The top floor was destroyed during this period - whether by del...

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Image: Martin Dawes | CC BY-SA 2.0

Canterbury Castle: Bats and Levelling Up

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clem Rutter, Rochester Kent, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2023, Canterbury Council was successful in securing £19.9 million from the UK government's Levelling Up Fund - a regeneration programme aimed at investing in heritage and cultural sites - for the restoration of historic buildings including the Castle. Work on the actual restor...

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Image: Clem Rutter, Rochester Kent | CC BY-SA 3.0