WESTMINSTER ABBEY

 Westminster Abbey

     Founded in 950AD, Westminster Abbey has been the Coronation Church since 1066 when William the Conqueror was crowned on Christmas Day. It is the resting place of more than 3,000 Britons.

     Henry III rebuilt the Abbey in the 13th century, designed with long transepts to accommodate many guests for future coronations.

     The column on the left is the Crimea Memorial.

     Above the Great West Door are ten statues of 20th-century Christian martyrs. Commemorated are Maximilian Kolbe, Manche Masemola, Janani Luwum, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Martin Luther King Jr. (above, right), Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Esther John, Lucian Tapiedi, and Wang Zhiming. The statues were unveiled in 1998. Click on the names for links to their Wikipedia entries.

 

      The Nave (left) was completed in 1517, 150 years after it was started. Sixteen handblown Waterford crystal chandeliers were gifted by the Guinness family in 1965.

      The Coronation Throne is the oldest piece of furniture in England still used for its original purpose - every coronation since 1308. It was built to house Scotland's Stone of Scone, seized by Edward I in 1279. In 1996 the stone was returned to Scotland, with the provision it would be brought down from Edinburgh Castle for coronations.

     The chair is covered in graffiti, carved in the 18th and 19th centuries by visitors and Westminster schoolboys. One of the visitors carved "P. Abbott slept in this chair 5-6 July 1800". In 1914, a suffragette bomb blew off a corner of the chair.

     Charles III was the 40th monarch crowned but his was only the 39th Coronation - William III and Mary were joint monarchs. The only monarch to sit in the chair a second time was Victoria, on the celebration of her Golden Jubilee. The chair was given a coat of dark varnish for the occasion which was afterwards removed - with some difficulty.

       Edward V, Lady Jane Grey and Edward VIII, were never crowned. Edward V and his younger brother Richard were the young Princes in the Tower who mysteriously vanished just 15 days into the 12-year-old Edward's reign. His successor Richard III is thought to be responsible for their murder. Lady Jane Grey, known as the 'nine days queen' had even less time to make a coronation guest list. Edward VIII abdicated in December 1936 in order to marry twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. His coronation would have been on May 12, 1937 (souvenir mugs were already on sale). Instead, his brother George VI was crowned on that day.

 

     Very little of the old stained glass has been preserved, the oldest being in the rose window of the North Transept (above, left), to a design of 1722. The striking Queen's Window (right) was unveiled in 2018 to celebrate Elizabeth II becoming the United Kingdom's longest-reigning monarch. It shows a countryside scene inspired by the artist David Hockney's native Yorkshire.

      The Quire (left) in Westminster Abbey is where the choir are seated in stalls. Why quire, my sub-editor asks? Thanks, Paul. Well, you'd think it might be an antiquated spelling of choir. But apparently not. The definition of quire is 'four sheets of paper folded to form eight leaves in ancient manuscripts'. So perhaps the best explanation is it was an error that was never picked up on ye olde spellcheck. Also, church quires don't always accommodate choirs. 

      By order of Henry III, the Cosmati Pavement was laid down in front of the High Altar in 1268 by Italian craftsmen. This is where coronations take place and contains over 30,000 pieces of glass or stone. The design symbolises the earth, the universe and when it will end - brass lettering claims that will be 19,683 years after the creation of the pavement. 

 

      Commissioned by Henry VII, the magnificent Lady Chapel, with it's spectacular fan-vaulted ceiling is the final masterpiece of English medieval architecture. Including Henry and his wife Elizabeth of York, it is the burial place of fifteen kings and queens including Elizabeth I (above) who shares her grave with half-sister Mary I.

       A memorial stone in what is now the RAF Chapel marks the spot where Oliver Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey. His body was exhumed in 1661 and subjected to a posthumous execution. His mutilated remains were then buried in various unknown locations. The Cromwell vault was later used as the burial place for Charles II's many illegitimate descendants.

      Cromwell is the only person other than the monarchy to have a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. Winston Churchill's state funeral was at St Paul's. Princess Diana's funeral was held at Westminster Abbey; but it wasn't a state funeral. 

     Above are memorials to Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, both buried here.

  

     The Latin alibi sepulti means 'buried elsewhere' - Highgate Cemetery in the case of Michael Faraday.

 

      Roger Bannister, remembered here, is buried in Oxford. He was the first man, in 1954, to run a mile in under four minutes. But Bannister himself considered his achievements as a doctor more significant.

     The ashes of Stephen Hawking are interred beneath the stone on the right. It bears the formula  which determines (as any fule kno) the Hawking temperature of a black hole of mass M. Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018, aged 76, not bad for someone who, aged 21, was given two years to live.

    More than 100 poets, writers and other creative artists are buried or have memorials in Poets' Corner. In 1555 Geoffrey Chaucer (below) was the first poet to be buried here, 155 years after his death .....

 

    Actor Laurence Olivier was the last to have his ashes buried in Poets' Corner. Since then, with no floor space remaining, memorial windows have been used for dedications. 

         

     There has often been reluctance by the Abbey to honour our great literary figures, thought to have questionable morality. William Shakespeare (above, left) was not accorded a memorial until 1740, 124 years after his passing and this bust of William Blake by Jacob Epstein did not appear until 1957, on the bicentenary Blake's death. 

     There are memorial stones for Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela in prominent places.

 

     Playwright and poet Ben Jonson lived on Abbey premises when he was old and living in poverty. He asked to be buried there but didn't think himself worthy of a six foot grave, requesting a plot 18 inches square. So he was buried upright .... with his name on the plaque above engraved in a different form to the one he preferred to be known by.

     The only painter to have a memorial in Westminster Abbey is Godfrey Kneller (above, right). His dying words were 'By God, I will not be buried in Westminster .... they do but bury fools there'. Kneller was interred in Twickenham.

     The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was the final resting place (on November 11, 1920) of a body brought back from France to represent the 526,816 British and Commonwealth soldiers  who died in the First World War and have no other known grave. Many countries have adopted this tradition; but this was the first. It is the only floor stone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk. The legend includes the words: 'Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior unknown by name or rank brought from France to lie among the most illustrious of the land".

            Other Lives .....

Finally .....

    Scenes set in Westminster Abbey in the movie The Da Vinci Code were actually shot in Lincoln Cathedral. The Abbey refusing filming citing the book to be theologically unsound.

    Spotted in the Cloisters, perhaps one of my ancestors? .....