Canterbury Cathedral - UNESCO World Heritage Site

Hey everyone, I'm Joel on the Road, and today my UNESCO World Heritage Journey is at Canterbury Cathedral in south-east England. So we're here today in the city of Canterbury in south-eastern England, and it's considered to be the spiritual home of Christian worship in the English-speaking world. And the reason that Canterbury is so important to English Christians is because in the 6th century AD, this is where St Augustine landed on a mission from Pope Gregory to convert as much of the British Isles to Christianity as he could. He used this church behind me as his base of operations. He also founded an abbey, and of course the famous Canterbury Cathedral. Behind me is St Martin's Church, and it's the oldest church in the entire English-speaking world. Parts of it date from the Roman times, and it still gets used for services today. Now this is the interior of Canterbury Cathedral, and it's huge, beautiful, and very impressive. The cathedral was founded in the late 6th century, but was destroyed by fire just after the Norman conquest in 1067. This current building was started in the late 11th century and took another hundred or so years to build, and it's been added onto at various points over the last thousand years really. Behind me on the floor is a candle, and it marks the spot of the cathedral's most famous episode, because it's right there in December 1180, where the Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered. He was having a political disagreement, and a religious disagreement, with King Henry II, who said something like, someone get rid of this priest for me. Four of his followers took him literally, travelled here to Canterbury, and killed the Archbishop. After his death he was venerated as a saint, and a shrine was built in his honour on that spot. Behind me you can see the third and final part of the World Heritage listing here in Canterbury, and it's the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey. The monastery was founded by St Augustine after he arrived in Canterbury in the 6th century, but was destroyed during the Reformation in the 15th century. This statue here is Ethelbert, who was the King of Kent, and the first Anglo-Saxon king to convert to Christianity. This was of course in the 6th century, just after the arrival of St Augustine. But we've had a fantastic day here today, checking out the religious sites of the area, we've had some traditional English weather just to really add to the mood, and it's very exciting for me as well, because it's my 100th UNESCO World Heritage Site, so I'm 10% of the way through the journey, and I'm really looking forward to doing some more. I hope you come with me. Thank you very much for watching, I'm Joel on the Road, and I'll see you at the next World Heritage Site.