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The Chaucer Hotel, Canterbury, Kent

Michael Pelham reviews a hotel and its restaurant as well as giving some interesting insights into this historic pilgrimage city.

NB: All prices are shown in pounds sterling

If you are going to stay in Canterbury (and you certainly should, for there is really too much to enjoy properly in one day) there is not a great choice of hotels, but the Chaucer Hotel is a good spot. It is central - immediately outside the old city walls, within a few minutes walk of the Cathedral - and it is easy to find. This is a consideration in a city whose centre is largely closed to motor vehicles and, where it is not, is a maze of small one-way streets. To find the Chaucer, you just drive round the Ring Road until you see the Bus Station on Upper Bridge Street and at the next roundabout the Chaucer Hotel is on your right, on St George's Place. And there is plenty of parking - another excellent trick in Canterbury, where visitors by coach have a long hike (albeit a pleasant one by the river) from the coach park to the centre of the city.

The Hotel was originally a fine Georgian Town House, built on the site of a bell foundry where the original Canterbury bells may have been cast. It was badly damaged during the air-raids of 1942 but later was re-built and extended sympathetically in the Georgian style. There are now 42 bedrooms, all with private bathroom and the usual tea and coffe-making facilities, colour TV, radio, direct dial telephone, trouser press and hair dryer that one can expect from a Forte Heritage Hotel, which is what it is. Mary Tourtel, creator of Rupert the Bear, was a long-term resident at the hotel in later life.

Breakfast is taken buffet-style, in a now well established and convenient format. The atmosphere is informal, which perhaps is welcomed by tourists. I was the only suit in a sea of sweaters.

The impression as you go into the hotel is of a comfortable, cosy foyer with plenty of space but well divided into sitting areas, like a series of smaller rooms, with log fires, and attractively decorated with some interesting pictures, many of local scenes or events. There is a pleasant, longish room adjoining, with the bar at one end and plenty of comfortable chairs and sofas, with low tables, at which one can sit and have light meals, if that is what you want, Incidentally, the light lunches are a good feature and very reasonably priced. If one were visiting for the day, one could do worse than park at the Chaucer, have lunch at the bar and then, leaving the car (with the hotel's permission, of course!) explore the city. The dining-room is also attractive and pleasantly furnished. A typical table d'hôte dinner menu might include, to start with, salmon and cucumber salad; deep fried courgette slices; duck and orange pâté or beef consommé. Main course could be roast beef; braised lambs' kidneys; baked halibut steak or a whole grilled plaice. Desserts include passion cake, raspberry pavlova or good old apple pie with custard. The cheeses are well kept and there is plenty of choice. They do not attempt "Haute Cuisine" but this is good honest food, well cooked, at very reasonable prices: two courses and coffee for 15.95 or three courses and coffee for 17.95.

The wine list is small but quite adequate. The House wine, French Bouchées, de Rhone, is fine at 12.00 per bottle or 7.50 per half. There is a good Sancerre at 18.50, some Australian wine at about 19.00 and their most expensive still wine is a Chateauneuf-du-Pape at 25.00. You may like to try a locally made wine from Lamberhurst Priory at 13.95. Their cheapest champagne is Piper Heidsieck at 34.95. Well kept Stone's Bitter beer is also available.

Not far from the hotel is St Martin's church, the oldest parish church in England, which has been in continuous use since the 6th century. It was possibly in use for Christian worship even before the arrival of St Augustine in AD 597, having been built in Roman times. It was here that King Ethelbert's wife Bertha, a Christian, was allowed to practise her faith and it was due to her that Augustine was welcomed kindly by the king and allowed to build his Abbey.

There is so much else to see and enjoy in Canterbury, but especially, of course, the great Cathedral, with its Norman crypt, magnificent perpendicular nave, superb stained glass and evocative cloisters. It was here, on the 29th December 1170 that four knights, acting, they thought, according to the wishes of King Henry II, murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket. Two days later, that series of miracles began which was to lead to the Archbishop's canonisation as a Saint and to Canterbury becoming the most poular centre of pilgrimage in the England of the Middle ages.

So it was that Chaucer's pilgrims came to tell their "Canterbury Tales" and we can still join them:

"And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were sicke."

The Chaucer Hotel, Ivy Lane, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1TU
Tel 01227 464427 Fax 01227 450397
Double or twin rooms from 85.00. Leisure Breaks available.

Michael Pelham is proprietor of Pelham Tours which specialises in gastronomic, sporting and other tours.

Pelham Tours, Old Way House, Beaulieu, Hampshire. Tel: 01590 612264; Fax: 01590 612747
Email: peltours@interalpha.co.uk

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