The Cathedral’s clergy have also created a range of other online video content, including the Dean of Canterbury’s readings of classic tales.
The Cathedral supports Porchlight and Canterbury Food Bank. Visit their sites to get involved or to discover the help and support available.
We have reopened to visitors and for services of worship
We’re delighted to welcome you back. We’ve introduced a range of new safety measures to ensure your wellbeing, including one-way routes, enhanced cleaning regimes, hand sanitiser stations, distanced seating, additional signage and floor markings, and PPE for our staff, volunteers and Constables as appropriate. We've also achieved the ‘We’re Good To Go’ official UK mark to signal that we follow Government and industry COVID-19 guidelines and have a process in place to maintain cleanliness and aid social distancing.
We’ve also made several other changes, including the introduction of pre-booked tickets, and free entry for children and reduced charges for adults until 30 September 2020.
We advise that you limit your close social interaction to your own household and up to one other, wherever possible, before, during and after these services. All are welcome and there is no charge to attend a service.
* Even when tickets run out for our 10.30 Sunday Eucharist, we may have space to admit those who show up on the day on a first-come first-served basis. The service will also be broadcast online at 12.00 (see below).
** Please note the following changes to the usual pattern of daily Choral Evensong:
Wednesday 28 October - Said Evening Prayer will be in the Crypt at the earlier time of 4pm. This service will not be broadcast online.
Monday 2 November - The 5.30pm Service will be a Requiem Eucharist in the Nave, Evening Prayer will be said in the Crypt at 4.30pm
Sunday 8 November (Remembrance Sunday) - The 10.30am Service will be a Civic Remembrance Service (tickets should be booked online), the 5.30pm Service will be a Sung Eucharist (no tickets required)
Daily worship: online services
The following services are broadcast on our homepage and on the Cathedral's YouTube channel.
Sir Jacob Astley’s Prayer (an example of an Arrow Prayer that can come readily to the mind in times of need):
‘O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day,
If I forget thee, do not thou forget me’
Thomas More’s Last Words:
‘I die the King’s good servant – but God’s first.’
Gerard Manley Hopkin’s Last sonnet, “To R.B.”, remembering and giving thanks to poet Robert Bridges on the anniversary of his birth:
The fine delight that fathers thought: the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenched faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and combs the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand a work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you with some sighs, our explanation.
Evening Prayer
Choral Evensong
Click here to download the Evensong Order of Service, and click here for our Music List.
Sunday Sung Eucharist
Click here to download this week’s Order of Service, and click here for our Music List.
Sunday Compline
The words of the poem read by The Dean in this service, ‘The Sundial’ by Thomas Love Peacock:
The ivy o’er the mouldering wall
Spreads like a tree, the growth of years:
The wild wind through the doorless hall
A melancholy music rears,
A solitary voice, that sighs
O’er man’s forgotten pageantries.
Above the central gate, the clock,
Through clustering ivy dimly seen,
Seems, like the ghost of Time, to mock
The wrecks of power that once has been.
The hands are rusted on its face;
Even where they ceased, in years gone by,
To keep the flying moments pace;
Fixing, in Fancy’s thoughtful eye,
A point of ages passed away,
A speck of time, that owns no tie
With aught that lives and breathes to-day.
But ‘mid the rank and towering grass,
Where breezes wave, in mournful sport,
The weeds that choke the ruined court,
The careless hours that circling pass,
Still trace upon the dialled brass
The shade of their unvarying way:
And evermore, with every ray
That breaks the clouds and gilds the air,
Time’s stealthy steps are imaged there:
Even as the long-revolving years
In self-reflecting circles flow,
From the first bud the hedge-row bears,
To wintry Nature’s robe of snow.
The changeful forms of mortal things
Decay and pass; and art and power
Oppose in vain the doom that flings
Oblivion on their closing hour:
While still, to every woodland vale,
New blooms, new fruits, the seasons bring,
For other eyes and lips to hail
With looks and sounds of welcoming:
As where some stream light-eddying roves
By sunny meads and shadowy groves,
Wave following wave departs for ever,
But still flows on the eternal river.
St Lukestide service of Healing and Wholeness – Sunday, 18th October 2020
Join Bishop Rose for the St Lukestide service of Healing and Wholeness
Other videos by our clergy
The Cathedral’s clergy have created a range of other online content including a video series on the 14th-century English anchoress and mystic Julian of Norwich, the Dean of Canterbury’s readings of classic tales, and video feeds of the Deanery Garden and its animals. Click on the links below to watch these.
We pray today for our world, that as we move through the phases of the COVID-19 emergency, we would strive for collaboration not conflict between nations:
God of love,
in whom we are all united,
bring together in your peace all the nations of this world.
Keep us from the temptations of blame and aggression,
to which our grief so often leads,
and help us instead to pursue the ways of
gentleness, diplomacy, and understanding,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lord bless us and keep us, the Lord make his face to shine upon us and be gracious to us, the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace. Amen.
Supporting Us
The miracle is that this Cathedral was built by ordinary men and women like ourselves. It is our responsibility to hand that inheritance into the future.
Victor De Waal, Dean of Canterbury (1977)
The coronavirus crisis means that we need your support more than ever. The Cathedral is one of the world’s Holy Places, a special site of unique significance where worship and pilgrimage has been part of daily life for over 1,400 years.
Canterbury Cathedral does not receive any funding from the Church, the Crown, or the Government. During this time, we have no income from visitors, our Shop, nor the Cathedral Lodge hotel and conference centre. Even when UK lockdown ends, the financial pressures on the Cathedral are likely to persist for some time.
We’re delighted to welcome you back. We’ve introduced a range of new safety measures to ensure your wellbeing, including one-way routes, enhanced cleaning regimes, hand sanitiser stations, distanced seating, additional signage and floor markings, and PPE for our staff, volunteers and Constables as appropriate. We've also achieved the ‘We’re Good To Go’ official UK mark to signal that we follow Government and industry COVID-19 guidelines and have a process in place to maintain cleanliness and aid social distancing.
We’ve also made several other changes, including the introduction of pre-booked tickets, and free entry for children and reduced charges for adults until 30 September 2020.
