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Westminster Abbey
back to sights listingAn architectural masterpiece of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, Westminster Abbey also presents a unique pageant of British history - the Confessor's Shrine, the tombs of kings and queens, and countless memorials to the famous and the great.
Westminster Abbey is one of Europe's finest Gothic buildings and the scene of marriages and burials of British monarchs, a place for every coronation since 1066 and for numerous other royal occasions. Today it is still a church dedicated to regular worship and to the celebration of great events in the life of the nation.
The origins of Westminster Abbey are uncertain. There were certainly preexisting foundations when Edward the Confessor was crowned in 1040, moved his palace to Westminster, and began building a church. Only traces have been found of that incarnation, which was consecrated eight days before Edward's death in 1066. Edward's canonization in 1139 gave a succession of kings added incentive to shower the abbey with attention and improvements. Henry III, full of ideas from his travels in France, razed it to the ground and started again with Amiens and Rheims in mind. In fact, it was the master mason Henry de Reyns, who, between 1245 and 1254, put up the transepts, north front, and rose windows, as well as part of the cloisters and chapter house; and it was his master plan that, funded by Richard II, was resumed 100 years later. The abbey was eventually completed in 1532. After that, Sir Christopher Wren had a hand in shaping the place; his west towers were completed in 1745, 22 years after his death, by Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Entering by the north door, the first thing you see on your left are the overbearing and extravagant 18th-century monuments of statesmen in the north transept and north-transept chapels. Look up to your right to see the painted-glass rose window, the largest of its kind. At many points the view of the abbey is crowded by the many statues and screens; to your right there is the 19th- (and part 13th-) century choir screen, while to the left is the sacrarium, containing the medieval kings' tombs which screen the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor. Due to its great age, the shrine to the pre-Norman king known as Edward the Confessor is closed off but continuing to the foot of the Henry VII Chapel steps you can still see the hot seat of power, the Coronation Chair, which has been briefly graced by nearly every regal posterior. Edward I ordered it around 1300; it used to shelter the Stone of Scone, upon which Scottish Kings had been crowned since time began, but this precious relic was returned to Scotland's Edinburgh Castle. The stone is to be returned to England, however, for the duration of future coronations.
The tombs and monuments with which Westminster Abbey is packed began to appear at an accelerated rate starting in the 18th century. One earlier occupant, though, was Geoffrey Chaucer, who in 1400 became the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner. Most of the other honored writers have only their memorials here, not their bones: William Shakespeare and William Blake, John Milton, Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.
The Abbey Museum is in the undercroft, which survives from Edward the Confessor's original church, and includes a collection of deliciously macabre effigies made from the death masks and actual clothing of Charles II and Admiral Lord Nelson and the battle kit of shield, saddle, and helmet of Henry V at Agincourt, among other fascinating relics.
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Address:
Westminster Abbey
Broad Sanctuary
London SW1, United Kingdom
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