Having looked at the facade and its two rows of heraldry, we now come to the gate of Christ Church Gate in Canterbury.
Above the main gate (we will discuss the smaller postern gate in our next post) we find two coats of arms.
The one on the left is the arms of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury 1504-1532. He was Archbishop at the time of the construction of Christ Church Gate. (We saw his arms, marshaled - as here - with the arms of the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury, in the church of St. Mary-at-Lambeth in London, in our post of September 20, 2018 at https://blog.appletonstudios.com/2018/09/the-arms-of-archbishop.html) The Archbishop's arms are blazoned: Gules a fess or between in chief a goat's head erased and in base three escallops argent.
The arms on the right are those of the martyred Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162-1170. Here again, his arms, blazoned Argent three Cornish coughs sable beaked and legged gules, are marshaled with the arms of the Archiepiscopal See.
Have you been to see the repainted arms on the Gate as of last year? They look magnificent, with or done in metallic paint. It's also now clear that the top row are the fanciful arms of the Apostles, with many showing tools of their trades, a rooster natural for Peter, thirty (not 25) plates for Judas Iscariot, etc.
ReplyDeleteI've not had the opportunity to go back myself yet, but I have seen a couple of photographs of the refurbished shields. They look really nice! (Though I did notice an error in the repainting of one of the personal coats of arms, that of Janet Stancomb-Wills, which should have "bees proper" but the bees have been painted as entirely gold/yellow.)
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