There and Back Again
Journeys through the medieval world
There and back again: Journeys through the medieval world
An exhibition exploring aspects of the medieval world in England and Kent
2026 marks the 10th anniversary of Canterbury Medieval Weekend, highlighting the richness of medieval history to wide audiences in an accessible format.
Using material from Special Collections and Archives, The Beaney and Canterbury Cathedral, the exhibition tells the story of medieval maps and mapping, pilgrimage - medieval and modern, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
The exhibition showcases material from the following collections:
Pre 1700 collection - Local History Collection - Classified collection
Exhibition contents
- "What man artow?" : Geoffrey Chaucer's Life and The Canterbury Tales
- The Tale of Beryn : A continuation of The Canterbury Tales
- Pilgrimage
to Canterbury
- Caring for poor pilgrims : St Thomas’ Hospital
- Journey of Margery Kempe : A Mystic and a Traveller
- Mapping
the medieval world
"What man artow?": Geoffrey Chaucer's Life and The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of a London wine merchant who became "the Father of English poetry", concluded his 60 or so years of life in September 1400.
There are almost 500 surviving documents that provide a window into the various occupations of Chaucer as he worked to carve out a career within the tangled social and bureaucratic hierarchies of fourteenth-century England.
Surprisingly to us who only know Chaucer because of his literature, not
a single one of these documents ever record his status as a poet. Instead, they
refer to him against the roles and occupations from which he earned a living,
first serving various members of Edward III's family, and then taking up one of
the most important bureaucratic jobs in the kingdom, as Comptroller of Wool
Customs in the port of London. Chaucer's honesty is reflected by the fact that
he is one of the few people that did this job who didn't become suspiciously
rich in the process!
Much of Chaucer's employment from the mid 1380s places him in Kent, where he spent five years as a justice of the peace (1385-9), a role that would have probably required his presence at regional courts in towns such as Sittingbourne, Rochester and of course, Canterbury – towns along the very road that his pilgrims would travel in The Canterbury Tales, which Chaucer began writing around this time.
Image: Title page from Geoffrey Chaucer, Works (London 1598) [Pre-1700 Collection q C 598 CHA]
The Canterbury Tales chronicles a tale-telling competition by a company of pilgrims travelling between a rowdy Inn in Southwark to Canterbury. The Tales were an extraordinary innovation for the time, showcasing diverse genres featuring tellers from across the social panorama, from a risqué female cloth-maker from Bath (the Wife of Bath), to a noble warrior returned from battles across the known world (the Knight), to a drunken 'churl' who swears outrageously as he insists on telling his very rude tale (the Miller).
The Tales were sadly unfinished when Chaucer died in 1400. At that point, they were likely collections of the sections he had written (which we refer to as fragments). One of the first copies of The Canterbury Tales which was assembled by Chaucer's literary executors is the Ellesmere manuscript (you can see a facsimile in the exhibition). This book contains probably the first likeness of Chaucer, among portraits of all the tale tellers. Ultimately all portraits of Chaucer since then stem from this image, including the statue in Canterbury’s town centre!
Image: Likely Geoffrey Chaucer depicted in the Ellesmere Chaucer [Classified sequence F PD 1865]
A continuation of The Canterbury Tales
The Tale of Beryn
Because Chaucer never finished The Canterbury Tales and his pilgrims hadn’t arrived in Canterbury in what he had penned of the Tales before his death in 1400, his passing led to a number of 'continuations' in what might now be regarded as 'fan fiction'.
One anonymous poet created The Tale of Beryn, which in its extended prologue describes the pilgrims arriving at Canterbury, visiting Thomas Becket’s shrine, and other activities. There are several ideas about who created The Tale of Beryn, but the most compelling is that he was a monk from Canterbury Cathedral's monastic priory. This seems likely due to his intimate knowledge of pilgrim practices and his knowledge of the city.
The pilgrims stayed at the Chequer of Hope which was an inn built in 1392 by Christchurch Priory. It was designed to house pilgrims coming to see Thomas Becket’s shrine. Holy sites, like Christchurch, would sell pilgrimage badges as souvenirs for financial purposes. They also discouraged pilgrims from breaking off parts of Becket’s shrine as a souvenir. The Chequer of Hope was at the corner of Mercery Lane and the High Street in Canterbury. The western wing burned down in 1865 but much of the inn can still be seen today. Accurate pilgrim routines described in The Tale of Beryn, include naming the correct offerings of silver brooches and rings to Becket’s shrine, kissing the relics as displayed, and kneeling at the shrine telling (counting) their beads on their rosaries.
Image: Map from William Smith’s unique MS, Sloane 2596, published in F.J. Furnivall, The Tale of Beryn (reprint 1975) [Main Collection PR 1901.F87 FUR]
Pilgrimage to Canterbury
Becket’s shrine was one of the internationally important pilgrimage destinations in medieval Western Christendom, drawing pilgrims to Canterbury from soon after his murder (1170) until the destruction of the shrine in 1538. Initially, St Thomas was especially valued for his healing miracles, as witnessed in the Becket Miracle Windows in Canterbury Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel.
Canterbury’s
city and cathedral priory benefitted from the presence of the ‘hooly blisfil martir’.
While pilgrims came throughout the year, the most popular time was the Feast of
the Translation (7th July), and every 50 years from 1220 onwards was known as a
Jubilee.
Pilgrimage was viewed as a spiritual journey in Christian teaching, and today has seen a revival, for pilgrimage has always been important in all the world’s great religions.
As well as praying and leaving an offering at Becket’s shrine in the cathedral, medieval pilgrims might also visit the altar of the Sword Point, the tomb-shrine in the undercroft, and the Corona Chapel. Initially, ampulla and other small containers were used to hold ‘Becket water’, which was dispensed by the cathedral monks and said to contain Becket’s blood mixed with water. There are depictions of its curative power in the Becket Miracle Windows.
Image: Photograph of a Miracle Window in Canterbury Cathedral [Taken by Sheila Sweetinburgh]
As well as numerous inns both outside and inside the city wall, including The Cornysh Chogh, The Tabard and The Cheker where pilgrims could stay, food and drink was available from pie bakers, beer brewers and others. St Thomas’ Hospital on the High Street offered a bed overnight to poor pilgrims and the sick were welcome to stay longer. They were looked after by an elderly woman (aged at least 40), who was called Alice in the mid-1470s.
Tailors, shoemakers, cap makers, smiths and many others had shops in the main streets leading from the city’s six main gates, including Westgate (rebuilt c. 1380 with gun loops), to Christ Church Gate and the cathedral precincts. Badge makers also worked in Canterbury.
As today, having a memento in the form of a badge was valued by pilgrims to show they had completed their pilgrimage. Becket badges come in a wide variety of forms, some illustrate episodes in his life, including his return by ship from exile in France, while others depict the shrine. The largest collection is at the Museum of London, many of which were found on the Thames foreshore having perhaps been lost by pilgrims or thrown in when crossing London Bridge. These artefacts are useful evidence concerning badge making, such as the material used and details about fastening.
Wills also contain valuable evidence. William Lambe of St Paul’s parish, Canterbury, bequeathed his working tools and other equipment for candle and badge making to his son Robert. This included his scales and weights, his various pans and casting ladles, all his moulds and pins, and his counters and other tables in his workshop. His son did not long outlive him, leaving to his mother the scales and a quantity of lead. Others were to receive moulds, including for a penny man, a penny woman, and a heart.
Image: Excerpt from the will of Robert Lambe, held by the Kent History and Library Centre [Photograph taken by Sheila Sweetinburgh]
Caring for poor pilgrims : St Thomas' Hospital
By the time Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, St Thomas’ or Eastbridge Hospital had been accommodating poor and sick poor pilgrims for about two centuries. For the hospital was founded in the early years of Becket’s cult (before 1180) by Edward son of Odbold, a wealthy citizen and the alderman of Westgate. Some of the hospital’s earliest buildings still survive, although it expanded other the centuries, being sited beside and on the city’s Eastbridge.
St Thomas’ earliest rules do not survive, however those from the mid fourteenth century say that the hospital was to provide twelve beds for poor pilgrims who were allowed to stay for one night. Those who were sick could stay long – until they recovered sufficiently to complete their pilgrimage or if they died, they could be buried in the cathedral’s lay cemetery. The pilgrims were in the care of an elderly woman who was given 4d a day to cover their needs.
Before leaving the hospital, the pilgrims probably prayed in the upper chapel in thanksgiving for having arrived safely to Canterbury and for a successful conclusion to their pilgrimage. While there they may have marvelled at the intricacy of the chapel’s roof timbers that include a lantern structure as well as a king strut and scissor brace roof. Another survivor that these medieval pilgrims would have seen is the large wall painting of Christ in Majesty with the signs of the four Evangelists in ‘the refectory’, although the painting of Becket’s martyrdom that was also there has been lost.
Mapping the medieval world
Today, we take for granted the detail and spatial accuracy of modern maps. Yet, this precise visual representation of a physical reality was less important during the medieval period. Medieval maps manipulate both space and time, revealing as much about the philosophical, religious and historical views of the period, as they do about the geography of their world.
There was no standardised form of medieval map, each one could differ widely in its use and purpose. East represented the direction of Paradise and therefore was often placed in the most elevated physical and spiritual position at the top of the map. The three known continents, Asia, Europa and Africa, were often shown inside a circle, distances could take the form of days’ journey, and the depiction of places might focus as much on their significance and meaning as on their actual location. Time and space could also exist as lists of places, or as strip maps where geography relied on the user’s imagination.
When mapmakers attempted an accurate representation of space they were hindered by the lack of data. They were largely dependent on their own experience, or on textual descriptions from travellers’ accounts. Without geographic coordinates a higher degree of accuracy was impossible.
Medieval maps were part of a wider visual culture that brought meaning and order into the world. By the fifteenth century, trade and transport were expanding the medieval worldview and driving the need for more practical, and increasingly precise, geographical representations. This was enabled by the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s Geographia, by the development of precise navigation tools for shipping, and by the rise of scientific surveying. A geography based on place, time and meaning, was gradually replaced by the geography of space, distance and scale.
Image: Map of Great Britain circa A. D. 1360, known as the Gough map (Oxford, 1958) [Local History Collection, 1867130-2001]
Exhibition videos
Click on a card to play the video
With thanks
This exhibition was a collaboration between the following people:
Angela Broomfield
Clair Waller
Elijah Vote
Jamie Cornwell-Stevens
Karen Brayshaw
Kylie Brown
Ryan Perry
Sheila Sweetinburgh
Siena Buckland
Tressa Biener
Tris Lopez Huicochea