When the Palace of Westminster was being rebuilt after the fire of 1834, it was decided to include in the House of Lords a series of statues representing the barons associated with the Magna Carta....

Plan your visit to The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge

The tale of Rupert Bear begins with the story of the Caldwell Family. The Caldwell’s were a family of artists who worked at Canterbury Cathedral on the restoration of stained-glass windows. Their daughter, Mary, went on to attend Simon Langton Girls’ School, then studied at the Sidney Cooper School of...

Created by BAFTA award-winning Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms, Bagpuss was filmed in Firmin’s barn in Blean, just outside Canterbury.

The news of Archbishop Thomas Becket’s murder in 1170 spread with ferocity. Shortly after his death he was made a saint, and miracles began to be reported at his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. Pilgrims from Britain and Europe flocked to the city in the hope a visit would cure their...

Dating from about 850 AD, The Canterbury Cross has acquired widespread fame as a symbol of the Church of Christianity throughout the Anglican world. Discovered in 1867 during excavations in St. Georges Street, Canterbury, it incorporates a number of sophisticated techniques into its Saxon design.

On display is one woman’s lifetime collection of dolls and dolls house furniture from the early 20th century, selected and arranged by artist and puppeteer Estelle Rosenfeld. Miss G H Veraguth (1880-1974) grew her collection both at home in England and during travels with her mother in Europe...

Known as the Venus Flower Basket, this artefact is actually the skeleton of a deep ocean sponge. It is made of silica, or glass, by the soft-bodied creature living inside. In traditional Asian cultures it was given as a wedding gift (in its dead, dry state) because the sponge symbiotically...

This portrait is a copy by an unknown artist of Portrait of a Young Man by the famed Renaissance artist Raphael (1483 –1520). Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. The subject is thought to be a self-portrait...

There is a simple yet sad tale of how The Beaney came to acquire a rook dressed quite curiously in a red coat. The intriguing story is from the early 1900s when a group of boys, looking for a bit of fun, captured a rook and dressed it quite playfully...