This is going to be a very short blog for a change because I’ll use next week to give a round-up of the highlights of 2024. Then the blog will have a 2 week break over Christmas and in the first full week of January, I’ll preview the exciting events coming up in 2025.

So for this week, I am to a degree returning to Canterbury’s history and heritage because Dr Claire Bartram and I, as co-directors of CKHH, joined Dr Rory Loughnane from the University of Kent and other knowledgeable and interested people at a meeting to look at the draft plans for the new story gardens prepared by the firm tasked with producing them. These are part of the levelling-up project with the basic idea of appealing to residents and visitors alike and providing them with an attractive display that provides a little-known story linked to the specific site. As this is still in the developmental stage, I’m not going to say what these proposed stories are, nor what the display ‘totems’ will look like, but suffice to say the idea is to provide stories from different periods, albeit personally I think there is a definite lack of medieval ones, especially as that was arguably Canterbury’s key period if we think about Bertha, Vikings, Becket, pilgrims, Chaucer, Sudbury, Faunt to name but a few people/groups synonymous with the city’s history.

Regarding the meeting, it was fascinating to hear how the designers had decided upon the various parts of the panels and how they are keen to ensure they are not like displays you would find in a museum, so not text or image heavy as they see it and with more what you might see as stock graphics on the different sized tiles that will be put together a bit like a mosaic. Also interesting that the text is designed for the reading age of an 11-year-old. They had equally thought about the colour scheme, as well as looking to have the ‘story’ in a highly abbreviated form on one side and a reflective element on the other., which is a noteworthy idea.

As you can imagine there were queries, and some reservations from the audience, but all were prepared to engage creatively with what had been produced and when Claire and I left – for other meetings, there were plenty of people still in the room writing comments and suggestions for the design team. One allied proposal that sounds an excellent idea is to have a dozen literary figures denoted around Canterbury to form a literary trail, this would be a complementary proposal and is likely to appeal to residents and visitors alike. For it is important to find reasons for both groups to look at Canterbury as more than the cathedral, and even more than a tripartite UNESCO World Heritage site -all important but the city itself has an intriguing and exciting history. Indeed the A to Z of Canterbury’s heritage, produced at CCCU a few years ago, has much to recommend it for those seeking fascinating easily-digestible information on aspects of the city’s past: https://ckhh.org.uk/our-work/project/canterbury-heritage-a-to-z do feel free to explore it.

Consequently, it will be extremely interesting to see how this progresses, although I will feel it is a missed opportunity if the ‘story’ about the city’s early Tudor cucking stool by Solly’s Orchard doesn’t make the cut!