The most historic book in Medway is going on public display today, Monday, just a few feet from where it was written nearly 900 years ago.
Textus Roffensis was written by a monk at St Andrew's Priory in Rochester - now a ruined garden next to the cathedral - and is normally locked in Medway's light and temperature-controlled archives.
But the book is returning to the cathedral for three days while an academic conference looking at its role in early medieval England takes place.
Former KM Group director Sir Robert Worcester, now Chancellor of the University of Kent, started the campaign for it to be seen by the public. The Rochester Bridge Trust and Medway Council are providing support to enable it to go on show.
The book, which is officially called Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum (The Book of the Church of Rochester through Bishop Ernulf) is the oldest writing in English and is seen as the inspiration for the Magna Carta.
It is includes the first laws of England dating from around 600AD and the oldest of the cathedral's registers. The book, actually two books bound together in 1300, but thought to be by the same monk, is dated between 1122 and 1124.
It will be displayed in the crypt at Rochester Cathedral today, Tuesday and Wednesday. Admission is free.

Television historian Michael Wood is to deliver a public lecture on the Textus Roffensis today, Monday, at the Pilkington lecture theatre on the Medway universities' campus, starting at 6pm.