Britains Great Cathedrals_2of6_Canterbury Cathedral
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00:00Britain's cathedrals, majestic, magnificent, monumental.
00:07For more than 1400 years, they've dominated Britain's landscape.
00:12Never out of sight, never out of mind.
00:17Epic structures, they represent our history
00:20and the changing fortunes of a nation.
00:23I'm Tony Robinson, and in this series,
00:25I'll be exploring six of Britain's greatest cathedrals.
00:31What a privilege.
00:33Their stories of rivalry and royalty.
00:37Henry was determined to strip the church of its power.
00:42Of struggles and sacrifice.
00:45Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?
00:49Of martyrs and murder.
00:51And they just hacked him down right on the spot.
00:54Containing more than 1,000 years of history,
00:57I'll discover how these buildings were constructed.
01:01Isn't that extraordinary?
01:03How they've evolved and what secrets they hold.
01:17Canterbury, Britain's oldest cathedral.
01:21Built over 1,400 years ago,
01:24this World Heritage Site has become one of the biggest
01:28tourist attractions in the UK, with nearly a million visitors a year.
01:33It's the mother church for over 85 million people.
01:38It's witnessed the rise and fall of kings and queens,
01:41the murder of saints, and the birth of a religion.
01:47There have been feuds, fires, conquests, revolution,
01:51all of which have left their mark.
01:54Mind you, the cathedral's left its mark too.
01:57It was founded in the 6th century,
02:00and almost every English cathedral since then
02:03has in some way been inspired by it.
02:11In fact, most cathedrals have taken on the same basic shape as Canterbury.
02:16That of a cross, seen clearly from the inside.
02:20Seen clearly when looked at from above.
02:25For hundreds of years, right up to the late 19th century,
02:29cathedrals were the tallest man-made structures on Earth.
02:37Above all else, a cathedral is intended to be a reflection of heaven,
02:42so when you pass through its doors,
02:45it symbolises a spiritual journey through the house of God.
02:51MUSIC PLAYS
02:56Inside, it's awe-inspiring.
02:59This is the nave, which is the main public part of the building,
03:03and it's built to impress.
03:06This was the cutting edge of architecture at the time.
03:10The general masses would have seen nothing like it.
03:14Even today, the sheer size is overwhelming.
03:18It's nearly 525 feet long,
03:21and the arch ceiling is almost 85 feet high.
03:28The whole cathedral is laid out west to east,
03:32and the east is where the sun rises,
03:35so if you're walking through it,
03:37you're walking out of the darkness into the light.
03:41All of the architecture here is like that.
03:44It's all really well thought out.
03:49It's this fantastic architecture, and its fascinating history,
03:55that make the cathedral a magnet for tourists the world over.
03:59And it's those tourists who help pay its enormous upkeep costs,
04:05which are around £18,500 per day.
04:13As soon as people walk through the doors of the cathedral,
04:17they enter centuries of history.
04:20This cathedral really has seen it all.
04:23Torture, beheadings, Thomas Beckett and Henry VIII.
04:27It's been the backdrop for some of the most memorable moments of our past.
04:37But it all started in 595 AD,
04:41when the Pope sent a monk called Augustine to England
04:45to convert the English people to Christianity.
04:49Augustine needed a home for this task,
04:52so he decided to build a cathedral within the old Roman walls of Canterbury.
04:59With his base firmly established,
05:01the new Archbishop of Canterbury
05:04had set about converting the pagan people of Britain.
05:08And in that, he was incredibly successful.
05:11Indeed, when he died, seven years after he arrived,
05:14the Pope even made him a saint.
05:20But this isn't the original Canterbury Cathedral
05:23built by St Augustine in the 6th century.
05:26That was burnt down by a fire in 1067.
05:30The man responsible for the new Canterbury Cathedral
05:34came to prominence a year earlier, in 1066.
05:38William the Conqueror.
05:41William of Normandy became the first Norman king of England
05:45after his success at the Battle of Hastings,
05:48a point in history forever recorded in the famous Bayeux Tapestry.
05:53William was keen to make his mark, and he didn't care who got in his way.
06:00He immediately began replacing all the English Anglo-Saxon lords
06:05and ladies and clergy with his own people.
06:09And one of the first positions he needed to fill
06:12was that of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
06:15head of the church and a key player in the power structure of his new country.
06:20He appointed an old Norman ally called Lanfranc,
06:24but when Lanfranc got here, he was appalled at the state of the cathedral.
06:32It was in ruins, gutted by a fire three years earlier.
06:36Lanfranc wasted no time in rebuilding the cathedral.
06:40He based his new design on one similar to his previous church in Normandy,
06:45with chunky walls, curvy windows and arches, and great big bulky towers.
06:51The Anglo-Saxons had seen nothing like it.
06:55This crypt's a bit good, isn't it?
06:57It's the oldest part of the cathedral,
07:00and it's the largest of its kind in the country.
07:03Take a look at these pillars.
07:06These are really typical of the period.
07:09You've got all these complex carvings right up to here,
07:13and then at the top, sprouting like a palm tree,
07:16you've got all these arches flying off in all directions.
07:20This is a statement of power.
07:22It says, we're Norman, we're here, and we ain't going away.
07:29It took Lanfranc seven years to rebuild the cathedral,
07:33but its size and magnificence far exceeded the one it replaced.
07:38Finally, the Archbishop of Canterbury had a home to be proud of.
07:44Still, Lanfranc wasn't happy.
07:46He was the Archbishop of England's oldest cathedral.
07:50He wanted to be the undisputed leader of England's church,
07:54but much to his annoyance, he had a rival.
07:58The Archbishop of York, who'd stop at nothing to get to the top.
08:03The feud that started between these two men would last for centuries,
08:08and it threatened to rip apart the church and the very country.
08:16Canterbury Cathedral, more than 1,400 years old,
08:20it's often described as England in stone.
08:24Many of our country's most important historical moments
08:27have happened here at the cathedral.
08:30In 1070, William the Conqueror had appointed his friend and ally Lanfranc
08:35to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
08:38But at the same time, William appointed a second archbishop
08:42to head up the cathedral in York, his friend Thomas Bayeux.
08:47But this created a problem.
08:49He failed to make clear which of the two men would be in charge.
08:54Lanfranc demanded that it be him, but Bayeux refused to accept it.
09:02This caused a bitter and long-lasting north-south feud.
09:06Both archbishops petitioned the Pope,
09:09and he told William to settle the matter.
09:13In 1072, William came up with a plan.
09:17He forced both men to agree to the Accord of Winchester,
09:21a document that was supposed to settle the dispute
09:24between Canterbury and York.
09:26Hidden in the cathedral's thousands of historical records
09:30is the actual signed copy of the document.
09:34Cressida Williams, head of Canterbury's archives,
09:37has allowed me special access,
09:39and I can't wait to see the document for myself.
09:42What does it say?
09:44Well, this document establishes the Archbishop of Canterbury,
09:48more specifically Lanfranc,
09:50the first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury,
09:52as superior to the then Archbishop of York, Thomas.
09:56Who are the signatories?
09:58So, it's signed by those present.
10:01And is William one of these crosses?
10:03Yes, he is indeed.
10:05So, his is the first cross here.
10:07The big one? The big one.
10:09And above it, it says,
10:11Signum Willelmi Regis, the sign of William the King.
10:15So, this is the autograph cross of William the Conqueror.
10:19Is it this document that makes Canterbury
10:22the primary cathedral in England?
10:24No, because it was interpreted as being quite specific to Lanfranc
10:28and not necessarily his successors.
10:31So, York said, I didn't sign submission to Canterbury,
10:36I signed submission to a specific Archbishop of Canterbury.
10:41There is an indication of reluctance here.
10:44The subscriptions all say subscripcy.
10:47I have subscribed to this, so that's what Lanfranc says.
10:50But Thomas, Archbishop of York, writes,
10:53Concado, I concede.
10:55Oh, I can see that word there, yes, concede.
10:58Concede is a bit sort of mean-spirited, isn't it?
11:04The Accord of Winchester should have settled the matter once and for all,
11:08but it didn't.
11:11When Lanfranc died in 1089, Thomas, the Archbishop of York,
11:16claimed the agreement died with him.
11:19The row between their successors raged on for centuries.
11:23In 1102, at a meeting of the two archbishops,
11:27the Archbishop of York flew into a rage and kicked over his chair
11:32because he'd noticed that it was just slightly shorter
11:36than the chair on which Canterbury was about to sit.
11:41It took another 250 years for the issue to be fully resolved,
11:46and only then, thanks to the direct involvement of Pope Innocent VI,
11:51in 1352.
11:54He ruled that the Archbishop of York
11:57should be designated the Primate of England,
12:00and the Archbishop of Canterbury
12:02should be called the Primate of All England.
12:07The All is a subtle distinction,
12:10but ultimately it meant that Canterbury would be the senior archbishop.
12:17Having finally become the undisputed leader of the English Church,
12:21Canterbury could expand both its power base
12:25and the physical size of the cathedral itself.
12:29And the material they chose to expand the cathedral
12:33was designed to send a message.
12:36This white stone is actually very posh.
12:39It's limestone, but not any old limestone.
12:42It's from Caen in Normandy.
12:46Unlike British limestone, it's smoother, less coarse, easier to carve.
12:53So, much like champagne and soft cheese,
12:56if you want the best, you have to get it from France.
13:01Langfranc's friend, William the Conqueror, was keen on it too.
13:05In fact, he was using it all through the country,
13:09at the keep at the Tower of London,
13:12the castle and cathedral in Norwich,
13:15and Westminster Abbey.
13:18All these landmarks were built in just a 40-year period.
13:22They were a statement of pure and lasting power.
13:31Today, the cathedral has expanded to over 7,500 square metres
13:36and is one of the most stunning buildings in the country.
13:40Following on from the nave, two small chapels, or transepts,
13:45spread out north and south,
13:47sandwiching the huge 236-foot tower in the middle.
13:51After this, you reach the eastern end.
13:54This is the most holy section,
13:56where you find the high altar,
13:58dedicated shrines and two more small chapels.
14:02But it's in the heart of the cathedral you find the choir,
14:06the most stunning part of all.
14:11It's tall, it's magnificent, it's glorious.
14:16It's also usually the best-lit part,
14:19from stained-glass windows high up near the ceiling.
14:24And here is the bishop's chair, or cathedra, hence the word cathedral.
14:33The cathedral's expansion process has never really stopped.
14:37Even today, it's undergoing a £25 million refurbishment.
14:44Not a lot of people get to walk on the roof of Canterbury Cathedral,
14:49do they?
14:50I can, because, as you can see, there's this massive repair going on.
14:54The leads were shot, they were letting the rain in,
14:57a lot of the wood was rotting, and it supports a massive weight.
15:02In fact, it had been almost 500 years
15:05since the cathedral had its last major overhaul, and it was showing.
15:10The timbers were rotting,
15:12the stone surrounding the windows was crumbling,
15:15and, not so bad, there was a real risk the whole roof could collapse.
15:20But now, renovation is well under way.
15:23When it's finished, there'll be a new nave roof,
15:26restored masonry and improved access
15:29to help cope with the never-ending line of tourists.
15:35But today's renovations are nothing compared to the task
15:39that faced 12th-century repairmen.
15:42Back then, the very existence of the cathedral was threatened.
15:49In the past, the area surrounding cathedrals
15:52would house carpenters, blacksmiths and masons,
15:56all the people who built and served
15:58what was essentially the main business in town.
16:02On 5th September 1174,
16:05some cottages caught fire on the far side of the monastery wall,
16:10over there, and the wind picked up,
16:12and blazing embers flew through the air
16:15and landed on the cathedral roof.
16:18And by the time the alarm had been given
16:20and people had come rushing here, it was too late.
16:23The interior was already ablaze.
16:26Inside the cathedral, there was panic.
16:29Monks, blinded by smoke, scrambled to save precious artefacts.
16:34A scalding liquid lead rained down on them from above.
16:38The cathedral was engulfed in a mighty inferno
16:41and in danger of being razed to the ground
16:44for the second time in its history.
16:47By the time it had been brought under control,
16:50this end of the cathedral, the eastern end,
16:52the most important and holy part of it,
16:55had been completely destroyed.
16:58Landfranc's vision had gone up in flames.
17:04Repairing the cathedral back in the 12th century
17:07cost a fortune, but it was a price Canterbury could afford.
17:12That's because the church had become
17:14the country's main site of pilgrimage.
17:17And with pilgrims came vast amounts of money.
17:21But what drew these hordes of pilgrims to Canterbury?
17:26It all began on the 3rd of June 1162,
17:29when the then king, Henry II,
17:32installed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury.
17:38Becket was the son of a wealthy commoner
17:41who had already served as the king's Lord Chancellor,
17:44one of the most powerful jobs in the land.
17:47By appointing him Archbishop,
17:49Henry hoped to exert greater influence over the church.
17:53At that time, Thomas wasn't even a priest,
17:56but he rapidly got himself ordained
17:59the day before he was due to be made Archbishop.
18:02And almost immediately underwent a miraculous transformation,
18:06from a fun-loving courtier to a serious, modestly-dressed cleric.
18:12In fact, most people said he was so holy
18:15that he wore a hairy, itchy vest under his robes.
18:20This certainly wasn't what Henry was expecting,
18:23and to make matters worse,
18:25Thomas appeared to start putting the church before the crown.
18:30The friendship between the two men rapidly deteriorated.
18:36And it soon became a full-blown feud.
18:39When Henry tried to pass new laws curbing the power of the church,
18:43and increasing his own, Becket opposed him.
18:47The king, reacting angrily, ordered Becket's arrest.
18:51He fled to France, and he stayed there for six years,
18:54until the pope threatened the king with excommunication,
18:57unless he let him return, whereupon Henry relented.
19:02But the conflict wasn't over, by any means.
19:07In June 1170, Henry passed the throne to his eldest son.
19:11Usually, the coronation would be performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury,
19:16but this time, Henry asked the archbishops of York, London and Salisbury to do it.
19:22Becket was so angry at this very deliberate snub,
19:25he used his power as leader of the Church of England
19:28to excommunicate all three bishops, which sent Henry into a rage.
19:34As far as the king was concerned, he'd invited Becket back into the country,
19:38and now he was being treated with contempt.
19:41In anger and frustration, he roared,
19:44''Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?''
19:48Now, technically, that was a question,
19:51but four of his knights took it as an instruction.
19:56Henry's words had devastating consequences.
19:59They'd lead to a crime within the walls of the cathedral,
20:02so violent it would echo through the centuries.
20:06And at the heart of it was Thomas Becket.
20:10CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL
20:16Canterbury Cathedral.
20:18Its 1400 years have coincided with the rise of empires and the fall of kings,
20:24but it's forever associated with the horrific events of December 29th, 1170.
20:33On that day, four knights arrived at Canterbury Cathedral from London
20:38on what they believed was an assassination mission sanctioned by the king.
20:44The knights burst in, and they're bellowing,
20:47''Where is Thomas Becket, the traitor to the king and the kingdom?''
20:53And all the monks gathered round Thomas in order to try and protect him,
20:57but he just eased his way through them, and he said to the knights,
21:02''I am he, and I'm not a traitor to the king, I'm just a priest.
21:07''What do you want?''
21:10And there was a silence, they didn't say anything.
21:13And then they just hashed him down right on the spot.
21:19One monk, Edward Grimm, was himself wounded trying to protect Becket.
21:24Afterwards, he wrote a chilling eyewitness account
21:28that remarkably still exists today.
21:31The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon him, cutting off the top of the crown.
21:36Next, he received a second blow on the head,
21:39but still he stood firm and immovable.
21:43At the third blow, he fell on his knees and elbows,
21:46offering himself a living sacrifice and saying in a low voice,
21:51''For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church,
21:55''I am ready to embrace death.''
21:59The same clerk who had entered with the knights
22:01placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr,
22:05and horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements,
22:10crying to the others, ''Let us away, knights.
22:13''This fellow will arise no more.''
22:19The murder sent shockwaves throughout Europe.
22:22The king was worried.
22:24Even if people believed he hadn't meant for his words to be taken literally,
22:28the archbishop had still been slaughtered as a result of them.
22:33He knew he had to at least show he was trying to make amends.
22:40Henry's penance was really public.
22:43He walked to the cathedral barefoot,
22:45and when he got there, he allowed the monks to whip him on the back.
22:50Imagine that!
22:52The King of England being flogged with everybody watching.
22:56It was an unprecedented act.
22:59Whether it was a political act of contrition
23:02because he was worried about the power of Rome,
23:05or whether he was genuinely upset because he'd murdered a former friend,
23:10we'll never know.
23:12After that, he never again passed a law to gain power over the church.
23:17That wouldn't happen for another 400 years
23:20when the king was another man called Henry.
23:24As for Beckett, word of his killing spread all over Europe,
23:30and the faithful began regarding him as a martyr.
23:36Rumours began circulating that miracles had been performed at his tomb,
23:41and pilgrims started arriving at Canterbury Cathedral en masse.
23:46These supposed miracles began immediately after his death.
23:51Cloths soaked with Beckett's blood were used to cure illnesses
23:55like leprosy, blindness, driving out devils.
23:59Indeed, over the course of ten years,
24:02703 Beckett-linked miracles were recorded,
24:06many of which are illustrated in these beautiful windows.
24:14The pilgrim numbers got a further boost
24:16when three years after Beckett's death, he was made a saint.
24:21A shrine was built above his bones in the eastern crypt,
24:24and pilgrims started flocking to the site.
24:28A whole industry grew up around Beckett,
24:31which created a vast amount of wealth for the cathedral.
24:35A lot of that money went on repairs, a lot on extensions,
24:39and some of it went on new places for the pilgrims to stay,
24:43which, of course, generated even more money.
24:46It was a cash cow.
24:49Here at the city's Beany Museum,
24:51you can get an insight into that medieval marketing.
24:56What kind of money were the clergy able to make out of Thomas a Beckett?
25:00A considerable amount, actually.
25:02We know that from the shrine alone in 1320,
25:05and there are lots of different collecting points around the cathedral,
25:08they made £670 or more that year from one place,
25:12and that is around £500,000 today, which is a huge sum of money.
25:17Were they selling what you might call tat in those days?
25:21Oh, there was plenty of tat, but it was all religious tat,
25:24rather than ordinary pencils.
25:26You find things that are found all around Canterbury,
25:28not just sold at the cathedral, but outside as well,
25:30which we call pilgrim badges.
25:32I've got some here to show you. Let's have a look.
25:35These are four of the most common types of pilgrim badges
25:38that we find in Canterbury.
25:40They're found not just in Canterbury, but across the UK,
25:43and even as far away as Scandinavia, actually.
25:45So this one is the most common type that we find.
25:49Presumably that's Beckett himself.
25:51Yes, that is. People would happily wear one of these
25:54to show that you wanted to be healed,
25:56and maybe also to hope that it might happen to you later,
25:58if it hadn't at the cathedral.
26:03The selling of souvenirs is something that carries on to this day,
26:07but instead of pilgrims, it's now tourists.
26:12By the Middle Ages, Canterbury had achieved world renown.
26:16The pilgrims had created a prolonged influx of wealth,
26:20and the church decided it was time to show off.
26:24In 1498, they added the magnificent bell tower
26:28to the existing structure.
26:30At almost 240 feet high, it dominated the East Kent landscape.
26:36The point wasn't that it provided the clergy with wonderful views,
26:40although it obviously did and still does.
26:43The real point is that pilgrims coming here
26:46from north, east, south or west
26:48could see this statement of stone from the horizon onwards
26:53as they came towards Canterbury.
27:01Hidden inside the tower is a relic of the pre-industrial age.
27:06This may look like the wheel for a giant hamster, but it isn't.
27:10It's actually a 500-year-old lift.
27:13What they used to do was, two men would get in
27:16and they'd walk round and round and round,
27:18and that would activate a load of ropes and pulleys
27:22so they could pull up tools and materials
27:26from the floor of the cathedral through that trap door,
27:31which is disguised very elegantly underneath as a shield.
27:35And they used this extraordinary contraption
27:39right up till the 1970s, when it was stopped.
27:42Why?
27:43Because it failed its health and safety tests.
27:47Outrageous.
27:50In 1509, a new king came to power, Henry VIII.
27:57His reign wouldn't just shake Canterbury Cathedral to its foundations,
28:01but the whole of Britain, too.
28:04The story of how Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
28:09in order to marry Anne Boleyn,
28:11has got to be one of the most famous in English history,
28:14and it's an event that changed our society forever.
28:19Catherine had previously been married to Henry's older brother, Arthur,
28:24but after just six months of marriage, he died, leaving her a widow.
28:29Catherine then got engaged to Henry,
28:32but under canon law, you weren't allowed to marry your brother's wife,
28:36so the Pope would have to give them special dispensation,
28:40which he did after Catherine testified
28:42that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated.
28:46Catherine and Henry were married for 24 years and had a daughter, Mary.
28:52But that wasn't good enough for Henry, who was desperate for a male heir.
28:58Henry decided that because he'd married his brother's wife,
29:01his relationship was cursed.
29:03And anyway, he fancied her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn,
29:06he wanted out of the marriage.
29:10Henry's problem? The Pope refused to annul his marriage.
29:15So he came up with a plan.
29:17Appoint his friend Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury,
29:21and he would do it instead.
29:24Cranmer not only obliged,
29:26he also declared Henry's new marriage to Anne as good and valid.
29:33The Pope was furious that Cranmer had annulled the king's first marriage
29:37and threatened to excommunicate them both.
29:40But there was no way Henry was going to cast Anne aside,
29:43and Cranmer saw a way of advancing his own ambitions.
29:50Before becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury,
29:53Cranmer had travelled extensively in Europe
29:56and had sympathies with the Protestant movement that was emerging there.
30:01And he persuaded Henry that a king should not be beholden to the Pope
30:06within his own sovereign kingdom.
30:09This had profound consequences.
30:11It was the beginning of the English Reformation
30:14which saw Henry break with Rome and the birth of the Church of England.
30:20Henry set about removing Rome's influence from all aspects of English life.
30:26Over the next four years, he dissolved 800 monasteries,
30:30which he viewed as hotbeds for Catholicism.
30:33And he converted almost all their churches to Anglican ones.
30:39But Canterbury Cathedral presented a special problem.
30:43Not only was it a monastery, it was also the shrine of St Thomas Becket,
30:48the Catholic priest who was martyred while defying a king.
30:53Knowing that Becket could act as a potential rallying symbol
30:56for discontented Catholics, the king declared him a traitor to the crown.
31:02He had his tomb smashed and his bones crushed and shattered.
31:07That candle marks where the tomb once stood.
31:12The only bit that remains is this solitary piece of pink marble.
31:19After helping Henry reform the church,
31:22Archbishop Cranmer had seen his cathedral violated and desecrated,
31:27but he still remained loyal to the king.
31:30Indeed, in 1536, he began embarking on one of the most onerous jobs
31:35he had to do for him, hearing the supposed confession of Anne Boleyn.
31:42Tragically, after bearing Henry a daughter,
31:45Anne's next two pregnancies ended with miscarriages.
31:50The king was convinced that his marriage to Anne was cursed.
31:56For a second time, Cranmer pronounced Henry's marriage null and void,
32:00this time on the grounds of adultery.
32:03A few days later, Anne was beheaded in the Tower of London,
32:07becoming the first ever English queen to be executed.
32:11But the ever-loyal Archbishop of Canterbury didn't stop there.
32:15Over the next six years,
32:17Cranmer oversaw the end of two more of Henry's marriages.
32:22But the protection he enjoyed under Henry VIII wouldn't last forever.
32:27In 1553, six years after Henry's death,
32:30his first daughter, Mary, seized the throne,
32:34and as a Catholic, she was out for revenge.
32:37Although her reign was short, it was also brutal,
32:40earning her the nickname Bloody Mary.
32:44She rounded up hundreds of leading Protestants and had them executed.
32:49And right at the top of her wanted list
32:51was Henry's loyal Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.
32:57On the 13th of November, 1553, he was brought to trial for treason,
33:02On the 13th of November, 1553, he was brought to trial for treason,
33:07and sentenced to death.
33:09As one of the chief architects of the Reformation
33:12and the country's break with Rome, that death was never going to be easy.
33:16Mary wanted to see him humiliated and broken.
33:22Cranmer suffered two years of mental and physical torture
33:26at the Tower of London.
33:28He was stripped, had his hair and fingernails pulled out,
33:31and was forced to watch close friends burn at the stake.
33:35Finally, he signed a confession, recanting his Protestant faith
33:39and accepting the Catholic Church once more.
33:43On the morning of March the 12th, 1556,
33:46Cranmer was taken from his cell to be burned at the stake.
33:50But the shell of a man had one act of defiance left.
33:54As the flames rose, he thrust his right hand,
33:58the one that had signed the confession,
34:00into the hottest part of the flames and screamed,
34:03''This hand hath offended.''
34:06And moments later, after he'd renounced his confession,
34:10he was consumed by the flames.
34:20After Mary's death in 1558,
34:23she was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I,
34:27daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
34:30Her 44-year reign brought a period of calm
34:34for both monarchy and the cathedrals.
34:37Over the next 400 years,
34:39Canterbury moved out of the political limelight
34:42and became what it was always intended to be,
34:45a place of prayer and the head church of England.
34:49But its significance to our country
34:52also made it a target in times of war.
34:58EXPLOSION
35:04Throughout history, Canterbury has been a focal point for the country,
35:08and never more so than in times of national crisis like war.
35:16This is the Warriors' Chapel,
35:18and the bell that hangs over here is from HMS Canterbury,
35:22a British warship that fought at the Battle of Jutland,
35:25the major sea battle in World War I.
35:28And the Canterbury was pivotal to its outcome.
35:33In 1916, a portion of the German high seas fleet
35:37beat a blockade and sailed out into the Atlantic.
35:40When Britain was alerted,
35:42it sent a fleet of Royal Navy ships in pursuit.
35:46Battle was joined, but in the first exchange of gunfire,
35:50the Royal Navy suffered devastating losses.
35:54HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary were blasted by German guns.
36:00Both sank, with the loss of 2,283 lives.
36:06The Battle of Jutland had started badly,
36:09but then HMS Canterbury,
36:11detached from the rest of the main fleet by 25 miles,
36:15played her key role.
36:18HMS Canterbury's lookouts spotted the muzzle flashes
36:22far off in the distant battle.
36:24Once it reported this to the British Admiral,
36:27he ordered the entire fleet of 151 battleships to converge and attack.
36:33100,000 sailors involved in fighting that lasted 36 hours.
36:38There were enormous losses on both sides.
36:43German losses totaled 11 ships with 2,500 deaths,
36:48the British 14 ships and over 6,000 deaths.
36:53A further 10,000 from both sides were wounded.
36:57The British and the Germans both claimed it as a victory,
37:01but in reality, even though the British had lost more ships,
37:05they came out on top.
37:07They inflicted so much heavy damage on the Germans
37:10that never again was Germany able to challenge for supremacy of the sea.
37:17One of the surviving ships from the battle was HMS Canterbury.
37:21Following her decommissioning after the war,
37:24her bell was brought to Canterbury Cathedral.
37:28Today, it's that bell which is the centrepiece
37:31of the daily 11am ceremony.
37:35The bell of HMS Canterbury is struck and we pause...
37:40World War I claimed the lives of over 6,000 soldiers
37:44based near Canterbury, mostly on the fields of France and Belgium.
37:49But although the city itself escaped fighting and losses,
37:53that certainly wasn't the case in World War II.
37:58German fighters waited overhead
38:00for the defending planes of the Royal Air Force, the RAF, to appear.
38:05Midway through the war, Hitler ordered his air force, the Luftwaffe...
38:11..to target places of cultural significance in Britain,
38:15which placed Canterbury Cathedral near the top of their list.
38:22The attacks that followed were known as the Beidecker Raids,
38:26named after the German tourist book of the same name.
38:31Apparently, a German propagandist said,
38:35This was a deliberate attack on our cultural history
38:39and its civilian population.
38:42And, unsurprisingly, Canterbury Cathedral had three stars.
38:48On 1st June 1942,
38:50wave after wave of German heavy bombers swept over Canterbury,
38:55dropping their payloads into the air.
38:58Wave after wave of German heavy bombers swept over Canterbury,
39:03dropping their payload indiscriminately.
39:07Within a matter of hours,
39:09130 high-explosive bombs and 3,600 incendiaries fell.
39:16The main objective was to obliterate Canterbury Cathedral,
39:20which Hitler thought would sap the morale of the British people.
39:24A group of plucky volunteers was mobilised to prevent this from happening.
39:28They were called fire watchers,
39:30and whenever the air raid warnings went off
39:32and everyone else scuttled off into their shelters,
39:35the fire watchers would get out their ladders,
39:38put them against the walls of the cathedral
39:40and climb up onto the cathedral roofs.
39:47During the bombing, these heroes would run to any incendiary
39:51that fell onto the cathedral roof
39:53and kick or throw it to the ground below,
39:56where other fire watchers would extinguish it.
40:01Getting the incendiaries off the roof was vital,
40:04not just for the obvious reason that they could set the roofs on fire,
40:08but also because they acted as markers
40:11for the pilots with the high-explosive bombs.
40:14These were really heroic and dangerous tasks.
40:20Huge swathes of Canterbury were reduced to rubble.
40:24More than 800 buildings were completely destroyed
40:28and another 1,000 seriously damaged.
40:3143 people lost their lives.
40:35But rising from the smoke, virtually unscathed,
40:39was Canterbury Cathedral.
40:41Prime Minister Winston Churchill later honoured the fire watchers
40:46who had saved a national treasure.
40:50He described them as the heroes with grimy faces.
40:55This site has now been home to a cathedral for well over 1,400 years,
41:00a constant present in our ever-changing story.
41:04All the key characters in that long history are etched in stone
41:09to make up the history of Canterbury Cathedral.
41:12It's a place of great significance.
41:14It's a place of great significance.
41:16It's a place of great significance.
41:18It's a place of great significance.
41:20All the key characters in that long history
41:23are etched in stone in the niches of the West End here.
41:28There's St Augustine, who founded the cathedral,
41:31and next to him is Lanfranc, the first Norman archbishop,
41:35and, of course, Thomas Becket,
41:38who unfortunately seems to have lost his head again.
41:43Then there are the kings and queens
41:45who've also played crucial roles in the cathedral's epic story,
41:49William the Conqueror and Henry VIII.
41:53These niches have been added to over the years,
41:56and in 2015, two more were added.
42:02The queen came to Canterbury and unveiled statues of herself
42:07and the Duke of Edinburgh to mark her 60 years on the throne.
42:12Their statues are placed close to the only other monarch
42:15to celebrate a diamond jubilee, Queen Victoria.
42:21Throughout its entire life,
42:23Canterbury has been, almost without interruption,
42:26a place of worship.
42:28It survived fires, feuds, irate kings
42:32and the ravages of time itself.
42:35And people who come here today
42:37don't just do so to admire its beautiful architecture,
42:41but to make some kind of connection between Britain today
42:45and its extraordinary past.