When Augustine landed in Kent in 597 and founded his church at Canterbury, the organised Christian faith took root in England. The cathedral remains the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, and mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to the court of King Æthelberht of Kent in 597. The see he founded at Canterbury became the fountainhead of the English Church, and every Archbishop of Canterbury since has traced his authority to that mission.
The Norman cathedral rose after a fire in 1067; when the eastern quire burned in 1174 it was rebuilt by William of Sens in the new Gothic manner, among the earliest such work in England. The great central Bell Harry tower was completed about 1498.
The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the altar in 1170 made Canterbury one of the foremost pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe, its shrine drawing travellers whose journeys Chaucer would immortalise.