Canterbury Cathedral – Evensong

I have made no secret of my love of the English evensong services.  Whenever we travel to a place with a cathedral, we make a point of attending one of their evening services.  Canterbury Cathedral is one of the most famous and venerated cathedrals in Britain, so while in eastern Kent, we stayed the afternoon and attended the cathedral's evening program.

Christian services have been conducted at the site of Canterbury Cathedral for at least 1,400 years.  (Contemporary accounts say that it was built on the site of an even older Roman church, but modern archaeologists have been unable to confirm that.)  The current building was constructed in the late 11th century after the previous cathedral burned down in 1067.  To be frank, the cathedral shows its age.  It is beautiful, I cannot deny that, but much of it is covered with scaffolding, and it just looks old.  We will be revisiting Salisbury Cathedral later this trip, and I will see if my memory is playing tricks on me or not, or whether Salisbury really is in better shape than Canterbury.

At any rate, Canterbury is still an absolutely beautiful cathedral, and the evening service we attended was sung by the resident girls' choir accompanied by a lay choir.  It had been two years since I had attended an evensong service, and while I had remembered how lovely they are, I had forgotten just how lovely they are.  The choristers sounded like angels, and in the millennium-old quire (yes, another advantage of attending these evensong services is gaining access to the quire), it is truly a religious experience.  A pleasant time for prayer and reflection.  If I lived or worked near Canterbury Cathedral, I would attend every night.

For any families of religious persuasion, I recommend attending evensong services wherever you can when you visit England.

(Incidentally, something I discovered after the fact: girls have only been permitted to sing in Canterbury's choir for just 2 years.  When we visited, it was the girls' last performance of the year, and they were bidding farewell to five of their members.  The minister said it would be an emotional farewell, and now that I know how young the girls' choir is, I imagine several of the departing members were members of that first inaugural choir that sang in Canterbury Cathedral in 2014.)