Westminster Abbey, London church that is the site of coronations and other ceremonies of national significance. It stands just west of the Houses of Parliament in the Greater London borough of Westminster. Situated on the grounds of a former Benedictine monastery, it was refounded as the Collegiate Church of St. Peter in Westminster by Queen Elizabeth I in 1560. In 1987 Westminster Abbey, St. Margaret’s Church, and the Houses of Parliament were collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Legend relates that Saberht, the first Christian king of the East Saxons, founded a church on a small island in the River Thames, then known as Thorney but later called the west minster (or monastery), and that this church was miraculously consecrated by St. Peter. It is certain that about 785 ce there was a small community of monks on the island and that the monastery was enlarged and remodeled by St. Dunstan of Canterbury about 960. St. Edward the Confessor built a new church on the site, which was consecrated on December 28, 1065. It was of considerable size and cruciform in plan. In 1245 Henry III pulled down the whole of Edward’s church (except the nave) and replaced it with the present abbey church in the pointed Gothic style of the period. The design and plan were strongly influenced by contemporary French cathedral architecture.
The rebuilding of the Norman-style nave was begun by the late 1300s under the architect Henry Yevele and continued intermittently until Tudor times. The Early English Gothic design of Henry III’s time predominates, however, giving the whole church the appearance of having been built at one time. The chapel of Henry VII (begun c. 1503), in Perpendicular Gothic style, replaced an earlier chapel and is famed for its exquisite fan vaulting. Above the original carved stalls hang the banners of the medieval Order of the Bath.
The western towers were the last addition to the building. They are sometimes said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but they were actually built by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James and completed about 1745. The choir stalls in the body of the church date from 1847, and the high altar and reredos were remodeled by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1867. Scott and J.L. Pearson also restored the north transept facade in the 1880s. The abbey was heavily damaged in the bombings that ravaged London in World War II, but it was restored soon after the war.
Coronations, weddings, and burials
Since William the Conqueror, every British sovereign has been crowned in the abbey except Edward V and Edward VIII, neither of whom was crowned. Additionally, Westminster Abbey has a long tradition of royal weddings, beginning with Henry I’s marriage to Matilda of Scotland in 1100. The only other reigning monarch to be wed in the abbey was Richard II, who married Anne of Bohemia in 1382. The abbey was the venue for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011.
Many kings and queens are buried near the shrine of Edward the Confessor or in Henry VII’s chapel. The last sovereign to be buried in the abbey was George II (died 1760); since then they have been buried at Windsor Castle. The abbey is crowded with the tombs and memorials of famous British subjects, such as Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone, and Ernest Rutherford. Part of the south transept is well known as Poets’ Corner and includes the tombs of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ben Jonson (who was buried upright), John Dryden, Robert Browning, and many others. The north transept has many memorials to British statesmen. The grave of the “Unknown Warrior,” whose remains were brought from Flanders (Belgium) in 1920, is in the centre of the nave near the west door.
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Western architecture: High GothicWestminster Abbey was rebuilt after 1245 by Henry III’s order, and in 1258 the remodeling of the east end of St. Paul’s Cathedral began. King Henry was doubtless inspired by the work carried out by his brother-in-law, King Louis IX of France, at the Sainte-Chapelle…
Western sculpture: High GothicThe architectural carving found at Westminster Abbey (mainly of the 1250s) has much of the daintiness of contemporary French work, although the drapery is still more like that of the early Chartres or Wells sculpture than that of the Joseph Master. The baggy fold forms of the Joseph Master rarely…
Henry Purcell: Life…he tuned the organ at Westminster Abbey and was employed there in 1675–76 to copy organ parts of anthems. In 1677 he succeeded Matthew Locke as the composer for Charles II’s string orchestra and in 1679 was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey in succession to the composer John Blow. A…
City of Westminster…of which became known as Westminster Abbey. St. Stephen’s Chapel, in the former palace precincts, was used from 1547 for meetings of the House of Commons. A fire in 1834 destroyed almost the entire palace and led to the building of the present Houses of Parliament (1837–60). The complex of…
Coronation, ceremony whereby a sovereign is inaugurated into office by receiving upon his or her head the crown, which is the chief symbol of regal authority. From earliest historical times a king, queen, or chieftain was inaugurated by some public ceremony; the sovereign might be raised upon a shield, presented…