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A CASE STUDY: PRIOR WIBERT
AND CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL
  In 1153 an unknown engineer made a plan of the water supply of Canterbury Cathedral. The plan has survived and gives us a number of clues that can help us reconstruct the health of the community in the Cathedral.
 
 
A drawing of the plan of the water supply designed for Canterbury Cathedral dated 1153. It is a complicated diagram known as Prior Wibert’s water works
 

Where did the water come from?
The water came from five springs outside the city walls. It was brought through a series of pipes to six settling tanks before it flowed to different parts of the Cathedral. The whole system must have been very costly but it did work. Some of the system still survives today and it has been calculated that the gravity flow would have been enough to run a fountain in the Cathedral cloister.

What does the plan tell us?
The plan shows the buildings that surrounded the cathedral and gives some clues about what it was like to live in the cathedral during the twelfth century. Archaeological evidence from the rest of the city shows that diet was improving for most people but their living conditions continued to be dirty and unhygienic. Things were better than during the Anglo-Saxon period but it was still the case that many children died young and that most people did not live beyond the age of forty.
 

Activities
How healthy was it living as a monk in Canterbury Cathedral in 1153?
Look at the plan of prior Wibert’s water works. Use this evidence and your knowledge of the Middle Ages to reconstruct what life in the Cathedral would have been like.
1. Why was the Church able to engineer a water and sewage system yet this was not possible in the town?
2. Using each of the sections on medicine in the Middle Ages write an account about the contribution the Church made to the health of the people of Kent.