Canterbury Cathedral Puts Women At The Centre Of Its Summer Programme

For nearly 1,500 years, Canterbury Cathedral has stood at the heart of English religious and cultural life. This summer, however, the focus turns toward the women who helped shape its story.

Through a programme of talks, guided walks, workshops and exhibitions, Makers, Rulers and Leaders: Celebrating the Women of Canterbury Cathedral will explore the lives and influence of three significant female figures connected to the Cathedral across centuries of British history.

The programme arrives at a particularly notable moment for the Church of England following the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year, the first woman to hold the position.

Yet while Mullally’s appointment marks a historic milestone, the Cathedral’s summer programme makes clear that influential women have long shaped Canterbury’s story.

Among them is Queen Bertha of Kent, the sixth century Frankish princess whose role in establishing Christianity in Anglo Saxon England remains one of the most significant yet often overlooked chapters in the country’s religious history. Without Bertha’s influence over her husband, King Æthelberht, historians argue the Gregorian mission led by Augustine may never have flourished in Kent in the way it ultimately did.

Visitors will be able to follow Queen Bertha’s footsteps through Canterbury during a series of guided walks running across the summer, beginning at St Martin's Church and concluding at the Cathedral itself.

The programme also revisits the city’s relationship with Elizabeth I, whose 1573 visit to Canterbury forms the subject of a special archival talk led by Cressida Williams, Head of Archives and Library at the Cathedral. The event will examine the political intrigue, diplomacy and ceremony surrounding the Queen’s stay, including the presence of French ambassadors attempting to persuade Elizabeth toward a Catholic marriage alliance.

Alongside the historical focus, the Cathedral is also leaning into a broader cultural and family programme designed to make the stories more accessible to younger audiences. Crown making workshops inspired by Queen Bertha, calligraphy sessions linked to Elizabeth I and creative activities centred around Archbishop Mullally’s ceremonial mitre will all feature throughout the summer.

A dedicated Women at the Cathedral tour will also run across June, July and August, exploring the lives of female benefactors, medieval figures and modern leaders whose contributions have often sat quietly beneath the wider history of the Cathedral itself.

What makes the programme particularly compelling is that it feels less like a traditional heritage campaign and more like an attempt to reframe the Cathedral’s story through a lens often overlooked within institutional history. Rather than treating these women as supporting figures within larger male narratives, the programme places them firmly at the centre of Canterbury’s evolving identity.

Kathryn Beldon, Receiver General and Chief Operating Officer at Canterbury Cathedral, described the women featured within the programme as “powerful reminders of how faith, courage and determination can shape history”.

For a Cathedral so closely tied to the story of England itself, the timing feels significant.

At a moment when institutions across Britain are increasingly reassessing whose stories are remembered and celebrated publicly, Canterbury Cathedral’s summer programme offers something more measured than reinvention. Instead, it quietly expands the lens through which one of Britain’s oldest institutions chooses to tell its story.