Canterbury, in Kent, has been the seat of the spiritual head of the Church of England for nearly five centuries. Canterbury`s other important monuments are the modest Church of St Martin, the oldest church in England, the ruins of the Abbey of St Augustine, a reminder of the saint`s evangelizing role in the Heptarchy from 597 and Christ Church Cathedral, a breathtaking mixture of Romanesque and Perpendicular Gothic, where Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170.