Canterbury Cathedral is the senior church of England and, through the Archbishop of Canterbury, the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its history turns on a single night in 1170, when Thomas Becket was killed in the north transept by knights who believed they were serving the king. Within a few years the murdered archbishop was a saint, his shrine one of the great pilgrimage destinations of Europe, and the roads to Canterbury busy enough to give Chaucer his framework. The building records that transformation. A Romanesque crypt survives beneath a soaring Gothic quire rebuilt after fire, the whole crowned by the great central tower known as Bell Harry; medieval stained glass, chantry chapels and royal tombs, including that of the Black Prince, fill the eastern arm. The cathedral forms part of the Canterbury World Heritage Site together with St Augustine's Abbey and St Martin's Church, marking the arrival of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England. The film combines architecture, pilgrimage history and the continuing life of a working cathedral.
