On 7 July 1220, half a century after his murder in Canterbury Cathedral, the remains of Thomas Becket were carefully removed from the building’s crypt and enshrined within its Trinity Chapel, which had been purpose- built to house the archbishop’s relics. The 800th anniversary of this relocation was celebrated in 2020, and while the milestone was somewhat overshadowed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a superb exhibition at the British Museum (see CA 376), a three-day international conference, and other events all contributed significantly to scholarship relating to the life, death, and memorialisation of the assassinated archbishop.
There was one extraordinary omission, however: although a new hypothetical reconstruction of Becket’s principal shrine was attempted (CA 364), recreating how it may have looked before its destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538, no archaeological assessment was offered of either of the cathedral’s chapels associated with the saint. Indeed, hardly any fresh knowledge had been accrued since Tim Tatton-Brown’s pioneering studies in the 1970s and 1980s, when he recorded the configuration of the medieval paving in both chapels, drawing attention to the fact that the site where Becket’s shrine pedestal had stood is paved with long, narrow slabs of Purbeck marble, which were formerly the steps to the podium.
What is known of the broader history of the chapels? Construction of the Trinity Chapel began in 1182; it is of three bays, apsidal, and encircled by a wide ambulatory. The westernmost bay was paved with figurative stone roundels that were later superseded by the repositioned Romanesque mosaic that I discussed in CA 397; the middle bay housed Becket’s principal shrine; and the apse held the altar of the Holy Trinity. Opening off the east side of the ambulatory is a circular, tower-like structure, known as the Corona Chapel, where a detached portion of Becket’s skull was separately enshrined – and when David Neal and I were studying the roundel and mosaic pavements, it was readily apparent that there was much more evidence relating to the historical development and use of the two chapels encapsulated in their walls and floors.
