Day 1: Arrival

After settling into your city centre hotel, meet your director for a welcome meeting and included dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Day 2: Canterbury

We dedicate the day to exploring the illustrious history of Canterbury and its many historic buildings, walking in the footsteps of saints, archbishops, monarchs, pilgrims and playwrights. The city’s pedestrianised cobbled streets are very picturesque and surrounded by Medieval city walls, the western gate of which is the largest surviving medieval gatehouse in England.

Canterbury was the capital of the Celtic Cantiaci tribe before becoming a significant Roman town on Watling Street, and then the capital of the Jute Kingdom of Kent in the 6th century. The arrival of St Augustine in AD 597 saw the founding of Canterbury Cathedral and the beginning of its role as the centre of the Christian church in England. The nearby St Martin’s Church is even older than the cathedral, and is recognised as the oldest existing parish church in the English-speaking world. Along with St Augustine’s Abbey, these three religious foundations are now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Canterbury Cathedral is a Romanesque and Gothic masterpiece and has been the site of numerous historical events, from planning the Magna Carta to the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales portray a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, and are revered as one of the paramount works of English literature. Canterbury Cathedral remains the head of the Anglican church, one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Europe, and one of the most important historic sites in the world.

Day 3: Dover

Dover is famous for three things; its white cliffs, its castle and its harbour, but it also offers two hidden gems; a Bronze Age boat and a Roman painted house.

We start the day with a visit to Dover’s Roman Painted House, discovered in 1970 and then excavated by local archaeologists during the following decade. Built in around 200 AD it formed part of the Roman military site in Dover, and has been described as the finest Roman house on show in Britain, with unique painted plaster walls (frescoes) and elaborate under floor heating (hypocaust).

We continue with a visit to the local town museum, which houses archaeological and historical artefacts from in and around Dover, including the famous Bronze Age boat, excavated in 1992. It is one of the best-preserved Bronze Age vessels in the world.

The main part of our day is given over to the mighty hilltop fortress of Dover Castle, known as “the Gateway to England”. Overlooking the English Channel, the site began life as an Iron Age hillfort and was used by the Romans for two lighthouses (pharoi) to guide the Roman fleet into the harbour below. One of these still stands today as one of only three surviving Roman-era lighthouses in the world, and the tallest and most complete standing Roman structure in England.

The impressive castle we see today was begun by Henry II in the 1180’s, with its inner and outer baileys and immense keep creating a sophisticated combination of defence and palatial residence. Over the next 800 years its buildings, defences and tunnels were adapted to meet the changing demands of warfare, right into the era of nuclear weapons. During the Second World War it became the headquarters for Operation Dynamo, coordinating the Dunkirk evacuations, and was also crucial for the D-Day landings. During the Cold War, the tunnel complex was converted into government offices tasked with creating some form of administration after a nuclear attack.

Day 4: Rochester & Upnor Castle

Dating back to Roman times, Rochester attracts visitors for its medieval architecture, including its castle, cathedral and quaint high street, and for its strong ties to author Charles Dickens, whose novels were set in the area.

Situated on the River Medway and Watling Street, Rochester was a strategically important royal castle, protecting England’s south-east coast from invasion. The first castle was founded in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, and its 12th-century keep is one of the best preserved of its time in England and France.

The Rochester diocese was founded in AD 604 by Bishop Justus, one of the missionaries who accompanied Augustine of Canterbury to convert the Jutes to Christianity. The original cathedral, the second oldest after Canterbury, remained a small structure until rebuilt on a much grander scale over the centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Upnor Castle is an attractive turreted castle set in tranquil grounds on the banks of the River Medway. It is a rare example of an Elizabethan artillery fort, built in 1559 on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I to defend her warships at anchor in the Medway and Chatham Dockyard. Despite a brave attempt, it entirely failed to do so in 1667, when the Dutch sailed past it to burn or capture the English fleet at anchor, one of the worst defeats ever suffered by the Royal Navy.

The castle consists of a two-storeyed main building protected by a curtain wall and towers, with a triangular gun platform projecting into the river. It was garrisoned by about 80 men with a peak armament of around 20 cannon of various calibres.

Day 5: Hever Castle

Dating back to the 14th century, Hever Castle was once the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and Mother of Elizabeth I. This is where Henry courted Anne and, as such, it formed the unlikely backdrop to a sequence of tumultuous events that forever changed the course of English and European history; it was Henry’s love for Anne and her insistence that she became his wife rather than his mistress that led to the King splitting from the Church in Rome and creating the Church of England.

There have been three main periods in the construction of this historic castle. The castle’s oldest part dates to 1270 and consisted of the gatehouse and a walled bailey. The second period was when the castle was converted into a manor in 1462 by Geoffrey Boleyn, who added a Tudor dwelling within the walls. In 1539 the property came into the possession of Henry VIII, after the death of Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn. Henry bestowed it upon his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, as part of the settlement following the annulment of their marriage. The third period in the castle’s history was in the 20th century, when it was acquired by William Waldorf Astor, who used his fortune to restore and extend the Castle into what we see today. The castle is set in 125 acres of glorious grounds, with magnificent award-winning gardens.

Day 6: Richborough Roman Fort, Reculver & Margate Shell Grotto

Richborough Roman Fort is the most symbolically important of all Roman sites in Britain. It was both the first place where the Romans arrived in AD 43, acting as the supply base for the invasion, and it was the last place they controlled as they withdrew in the 5th century. In the intervening centuries a town called Rutupiae developed around the fort and its thriving port, with a towering monumental arch marking the entrance to Roman Britain and the start of Watling Street. This gateway to Roman Britain was one of the largest monumental arches in the entire Roman Empire.

In response to Saxon raids from the mid-3rd century onwards, Richborough was turned into a Saxon shore fort, of which it remains one of the best surviving examples in the country. The triple ditches of the fort of c. AD 250 survive, while the impressive stone walls of c. AD 275–85 are the most prominent feature of the site today.

Richborough stood at the southern end of a sea channel which at that time separated the mainland from the Isle of Thanet. At the northern end of the channel, the Romans built another fort, called Reculver (Regulbium). This, like Richborough, became one of the chain of Saxon Shore forts. With the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Kent, Reculver became a monastery and it was here that King Eadberht II of Kent was buried in the 760s. Remodelling of the monastic church in the 12th century included the addition of tall twin towers which now form an atmospheric clifftop landmark.

The coastline here has changed dramatically since ancient times, with silting up of the sea channel on whose shores Richborough and Reculver once stood, and which separated the mainland from the Isle of Thanet. Since the 16th century Thanet has no longer been an island, but its sandy beaches at Ramsgate and Margate have remained popular seaside resorts for Londoners. Ramsgate played an important role in the Dunkirk evacuations during the Second World War, and Barnes Wallis tested prototypes of his bouncing bomb on the beaches near here. Margate contains a fascinating enigma well worth a visit while we are in the area—the Margate Shell Grotto. This is an ornate subterranean structure of winding passages and rooms, with almost all the surface area of its walls and roof covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet (190 m2) of mosaic, or 4.6 million shells. Its age and purpose remain unknown, with speculation ranging from an ancient Pagan grotto to an ornate Regency folly.

Day 7: Bigbury Hillfort, Maidstone Museum & the Medway Megaliths

Today we explore Kent’s prehistoric past, visiting two early Neolithic sites and an Iron Age hillfort, as well as enjoying the diverse collections of the Maidstone Museum.

On the outskirts of present-day Canterbury lies Bigbury Camp, the only confirmed Iron Age hill fort in east Kent. It was occupied from about 350 BC and is generally recognized as the site of Julius Caesar’s first engagement with the Britons in 54 BC. Caesar may have landed at Pegwell Bay, near Richborough, and advanced with his Legio VII to the hillfort, the first British stronghold on his route inland. The site was abandoned around this time, perhaps as a result of Caesar’s attack, and the focus of settlement was transferred to Canterbury, which appears to have been deliberately founded to replace it.

In the valley of the River Medway near Maidstone, we encounter a group of megalithic monuments which collectively form Kent’s version of the more famous megaliths around Wiltshire’s Stonehenge. The Coldrum and Kit’s Coty long barrows stand in open fields with fine views across the North Downs and Medway Valley, and would have been amongst the most striking monuments of Neolithic Britain. They were constructed for communal burial between about 4000 and 3000 BC by the earliest farming communities in Britain, and appear to have been important ritual sites for local communities over a considerable period of time.

Located in an Elizabethan manor house, the Maidstone Museum boasts a rich and impressive variety of historical objects, fine art and natural history, much of it with national and international significance. Its archaeology collection is the largest in Kent, comprising some 11,000 artefacts representative of every period from Prehistoric to Medieval eras. Of particular acclaim are the Anglo-Saxon items, among the finest in the country, and the Boughton Malherbe Bronze Age Hoard, the third largest Bronze Age hoard ever found in Britain.

We conclude the tour with included farewell dinner at the hotel, a fine way to celebrate our time together getting to know one of the most interesting and attractive county’s in England.

Day 8: Departure

Make your way home after a leisurely breakfast, or why not stay longer and enjoy more of Britain’s beautiful heritage.