St Augustine's Abbey and the Westgate open free from 11 to 20 September, among 31 Canterbury district openings. Full list, with times and what needs booking.
Thirty-one places across the Canterbury district open free of charge between Friday 11 and Sunday 20 September for Heritage Open Days, and the timetable is lopsided. Sixteen of them run on Saturday 12 September alone. Three days in the middle of the festival carry four or five openings each.
Two of the thirty-one normally charge for entry. St Augustine’s Abbey, part of the Canterbury World Heritage Site, opens 10am to 5pm on Saturday 19 September. The Westgate, the medieval gatehouse that served as the city prison, opens noon to 4pm on Sunday 13 September and says on its entry that it “will be open without its usual admission charge”.
That figure of 31 is our own count, not the festival’s. Heritage Open Days lists 37 entries under Canterbury. Five of them are at the Sandwich Medieval Centre, which is in the Dover district, and one is a duplicate: St Peter’s Methodist Church appears twice for the same afternoon, each entry carrying the other’s title as its description. We checked every postcode against the local authority boundary before counting.
Saturday 12 September: the busy day
If you only get one day, this is it. Sixteen openings, and all but one of them need no booking. Seven are in the city centre; the other nine are in Whitstable, Herne Bay and the villages.
- St Dunstan’s Church, London Road, 9.30am to 5pm
- The Old Church, St Alphege Seasalter, 9am to 5pm
- St Peter’s Anglican Church, St Peter’s Street, all day
- Broad Oak Chapel, Chapel Lane, 10am to 6pm
- Church of the Holy Innocents’, Adisham, 10am to 5pm
- St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich, 10am to 5pm
- St Peter’s Methodist Church, St Peter’s Street, 10am to 5pm, with a concert by Canterbury’s Ukrainian Ladies’ Choir from 5pm
- St Mildred’s Church, Church Lane, 10am to 4pm
- Everyday Histories Photo Exhibition, St John’s Church, Swalecliffe, 10am to 4pm
- Open Art Exhibition, the 14th century barn at Littlebourne, 10am to 4pm
- Reculver Towers and Roman Fort, 10am to 4pm
- Whitstable Museum, on the world’s first steam-hauled passenger railway, 10.30am to 4.30pm
- Canterbury Friends Meeting House, The Friars, 10.30am to 5pm
- The Playhouse, Whitstable, 11am to 2pm
- Maynard and Cotton’s Hospital chapel, Hospital Lane, noon to 4pm
- On Brotherhood, the freemasonry exhibition at St Peters Place, with a talk at 11am then a guided tour. Booking required.
The two that usually cost money
St Augustine’s Abbey, Longport, CT1 1PF, opens 10am to 5pm on Saturday 19 September. It is an English Heritage site, normally open daily with an admission charge, and English Heritage’s own page confirms the festival runs “from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 September 2026” with free access to participating sites (English Heritage). The abbey was founded in AD 598 and its ruins sit a few minutes’ walk from the cathedral precincts.
The Westgate, One Pound Lane, CT1 2BZ, opens noon to 4pm on Sunday 13 September. Standard admission is £4 for adults, £3 concession, £2 for children aged 5 to 17, under-fours free and £10 for a family ticket (The Old City Jail). A climb of 34 stairs reaches the guardchamber, built in 1380 over what was then the only road into the city from London.
Herne Bay’s Seaside Museum is the third money-saver. It runs “Free Entry Fridays” on 11 and 18 September, 11am to 4pm.
What is open on every other day
| Date | Open |
|---|---|
| Fri 11 Sep | St Dunstan's Church; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Reculver Towers; Whitstable Museum; Fordwich Town Hall (1.30pm to 4pm); Seaside Museum Herne Bay (free entry, 11am to 4pm); Monastic Gardens Tour, the cathedral (12.30pm, booking required); On Brotherhood (noon to 1.30pm, booking required) |
| Sun 13 Sep | The Westgate (noon to 4pm); Tower House (11am to 2pm); Broad Oak Chapel (10am to 5pm, service at 10.45am); St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Reculver Towers; Whitstable Museum; Open Art Exhibition, Littlebourne; Everyday Histories, Swalecliffe (11am to 4pm) |
| Mon 14 Sep | St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Fordwich Town Hall; Monastic Gardens Tour (12.30pm, booking required) |
| Tue 15 Sep | St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Fordwich Town Hall; On Brotherhood (noon to 1.30pm, booking required) |
| Wed 16 Sep | St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Fordwich Town Hall; St Peter's Anglican Church (noon to 4pm); The early Normans and Canterbury Cathedral (10.30am, 11.45am, 2pm, 3.15pm, booking required) |
| Thu 17 Sep | St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Whitstable Museum; Monastic Gardens Tour (12.30pm); The Beaney highlights tour (2.30pm); Food for Thought, a Bayeux Tapestry talk at Cathedral Lodge (7pm, booking required) |
| Fri 18 Sep | St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Whitstable Museum; Seaside Museum Herne Bay (free entry); Cathedral Gardens Through History (11am, noon, 1pm, 2pm, booking required); Lives of the Monks tour (11am, booking required) |
| Sat 19 Sep | St Augustine's Abbey (10am to 5pm); St Martin's Church tour (10am) and storytelling show (2pm); St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Reculver Towers; Whitstable Museum; On Brotherhood (2.30pm to 4pm, booking required) |
| Sun 20 Sep | Hales Place Chapel (11am to 5pm); Canterbury Roman Museum highlight tour (11.30am); Canterbury Cemetery Friends walks (1pm, 2pm, 3pm); St Martin's singing workshop (1pm); Lives of the Monks tour (2pm, booking required); St Dunstan's; St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich; Reculver Towers; Whitstable Museum |
Every entry above comes from the venue’s own listing on the Heritage Open Days Canterbury area list, checked on 25 August 2026. The area list only shows “multiple dates available” for anything running more than once, so the exact times here are taken from each venue’s individual page.
Book these six, or you will not get in
Six of the 31 will not admit you without a booking, and three more say booking is preferred. The six requiring it are all talks or guided tours with capped numbers:
- Monastic Gardens Tour, Canterbury Cathedral, 12.30pm on 11, 14 and 17 September
- On Brotherhood: demystifying freemasonry, St Peters Place, on 11, 12, 15 and 19 September
- The early Normans and Canterbury Cathedral, four tours on 16 September
- Food for Thought: the Bayeux Tapestry Revisited, a talk by Professor Benjamin Pohl of the University of Bristol at Cathedral Lodge, 7pm on 17 September
- Canterbury Cathedral Gardens Through History, four slots on 18 September
- Lives of the Monks Guided Tour, 11am on 18 September and 2pm on 20 September
Booking preferred, so worth ringing ahead: the Beaney highlights tour, the Roman Museum highlight tour and St Martin’s Church.
Three that are worth the trip
Tower House, in Westgate Gardens, opens 11am to 2pm on Sunday 13 September. Its entry promises you can “meet the Lord Mayor and Sheriff of Canterbury” inside what is normally a civic building rather than a visitor attraction.
Whitstable Museum opens on seven of the ten days, 10.30am to 4.30pm. It holds Stephenson’s original locomotive Invicta and the 1829 beam winding engine, from the Canterbury to Whitstable line, which its entry describes as the world’s first regular steam-drawn passenger railway.
Hales Place Chapel, on Tenterden Drive, opens 11am to 5pm on Sunday 20 September. It is a small Roman Catholic chapel dating from 1776, originally built as a belvedere, and it is not otherwise open to the public.
What it means for you: most of the district’s openings need nothing but turning up, and the ones that do need booking are the cathedral tours and the freemasonry exhibition, so sort those first. If you can only manage one day, make it Saturday 12 September, when 17 places are open, almost all of them without booking. If you want the two sites that usually charge, they fall on different weekends: the Westgate on Sunday 13 September and St Augustine’s Abbey on Saturday 19 September.
Driving in is the part people underestimate. Seven of Saturday 12 September’s openings sit in the city centre, so the park and ride sites at £4 a day will be quicker than circling for a space. Our parking in Canterbury page has the central car park prices, and the roadworks and travel page carries the closures running through September.
Sources
- Heritage Open Days: Canterbury printable area list and each venue’s own event page, for every opening, date and time above, checked 25 August 2026.
- English Heritage: St Augustine’s Abbey for the festival dates and the site’s normal opening.
- The Old City Jail: Westgate Towers Museum for the standard admission prices and normal opening hours.
- Postcodes checked against local authority boundaries using postcodes.io before counting, which is how the five Sandwich entries were excluded.
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