Canterbury Cathedral Enters Next Phase of £25 Million “Journey”

Canterbury Cathedral has entered the next phase of its £24.7 million renovation.

The project dubbed “The Canterbury Journey” has been ongoing with their Exhibition and Interpretation spaces phase and have started work to the roof.

The works that started in Autumn 2016, were designed to restore the west towers, re-timber the Nave roof and landscape the grounds.

Communications Officer for The Canterbury Journey, Katherine Skeates, said.: “We are building a new welcome centre, community space and free-to-enter viewing gallery. This will enhance the welcome for our visitors and make that experience better for them.

The aims of it are to conserve and repair some of the important parts of the building. So we are currently re-leading the whole of the Nave roof and doing vital repairs to the wood and stone on the roof.”

Explained: what is happening to Canterbury’s oldest monuments?

Works

Work happening on the Cathedral will see the west towers returned to their former glory. The Nave roof will be re-timbered and re-leaded. The landscaping efforts will make the entire grounds more accessible to everyone. Christ Church Gate (the main entrance on Burgate Lane) is having minor repairs.

Heritage Lottery Fund gave the Cathedral £13,800,000. The Canterbury Cathedral Trust giving £10,900,000. The Friends of Canterbury Cathedral also gave £250,000.

The Canterbury Cathedral stone masons are still hand crafting most of the renovation work internally.

Stone used for renovations are mined from the original quarry in France and finished in Cathedral’s yard in Broad Oak.

A new welcome centre building will be erected just behind the Christ Church Gate. This will exhibit some of the older less seen items from the Cathedrals vault. But keep an eye out around the grounds as there will be other things on display.

Part of the plan is to also have a purpose-built community space which will allow for better educational visits with some hands-on fun and games activities and events.

Unified reported in November, that the Cathedrals running costs are a staggering £18,000 a day, not including current works.