The Archbishop's Palace, Canterbury

Abstract The Archbishop's Palace in Canterbury, once the most important of all the Primate's palaces, was occupied from the 1080s until its demolition in c. 1650. A new smaller palace was then constructed in part of the ruins in 1899–1901. This has been used by twentieth-century archbishops ever since, largely as a ‘weekend palace’.With the arrival of Dr Robert Runcie as Archbishop in 1981, the Canterbury Archaeological Trust began work at the Archbishop's Palace, Canterbury where new drainage work was to be undertaken. A new survey and re-appraisal of the surviving fragments of the early thirteenth-century Great Hall, one of the largest buildings of its type in the country, was where the work started. Surprisingly, prior to this, the palace had never been studied in detail. Short accounts of the palace range from Lambarde's brief historical description in c. 1570 to Willis's summary of earlier topographical and historical studies in the later nineteenth century.In 1982 excavations situated mainly in the ...