Westminster Abbey is a large church in London in the City of Westminster. Its name came from its status as a large monastic church (or minster) to the west of the City of London (the central part of the municipal area where the city was founded). The borough "City of Westminster" gets its name from the church, rather than the other way around. The church's official title is the "Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster", and it has the special Church of England status of "Royal Peculiar", meaning it is responsible directly to the sovereign (currently Queen Elizabeth II), rather than being involved in the usual Church of England chain of command.

Westminster Abbey is one of the top tourist attractions in London for several reasons. First, it's quite large (530 feet long, with twin 225-foot towers) and beautiful inside and out. To those with any curiosity about history, the abbey is the site of every English/British coronation going back at least to William the Conqueror, in 1066.

The abbey has also been the site of 16 royal weddings, most recently that of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011 (Prince William's grandmother Queen Elizabeth was also married here, to Prince Philip in 1947 – Her Majesty was just a princess then, but she returned for her coronation in 1952 following the death of her father, George VI). The abbey would also have to qualify as possibly the most prestigious cemetery in the English-speaking world. Thousands of people, both royal and non-royal, are buried in the abbey (not including George VI, who is buried at Windsor Castle). A much-abridged list of the most well-known buried here would include Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, Neville Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, William Pitt, William Gladstone, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, George Frederick Handel, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Olivier, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Purcell, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Anne of Cleves. There are also innumerable monuments to well-known Brits who are buried elsewhere (e.g. Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Lord Byron, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, Benjamin Disraeli, Francis Drake, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde).

Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as Lord Protector during the tumultuous Interregnum in the 17th Century, was also buried in the abbey after his death in 1658, but in 1661, after the restoration of the monarchy, his body was dug up, hanged and beheaded for regicide (Charles I had been beheaded during the revolution that began the Interregnum) before being disposed of elsewhere. His head remained on public display on a spike in Westminster until the 1680s, after which it fell off during a storm and apparently was passed around between collectors and museum owners until finally being buried in Cambridge in 1960.

The original abbey at the Westminster site was established in the 960s or 970s as a community of Benedictine monks. During the following century, King Edward the Confessor had the abbey rebuilt, with construction of the church being completed around 1060.

The building wasn't consecrated until late in 1065, and Edward died a week later, on January 5 of 1066. At this time the throne passed to his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson, who was probably the first king to be crowned in the new church (documentation doesn't exist). If you've been paying attention, you've probably deduced that Harold's reign was a short one, as 1066 was also the year of William the Conqueror. William was a Norman duke who felt he had a claim to the throne after Edward's death (Edward was William's first cousin once removed, and William claimed that Edward had promised the throne to him). William showed up in England with an army and defeated (and killed) Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14. William was crowned in the abbey on Christmas Day as William I, this being the first documented coronation in the building.

Around 1245, King Henry III began a rebuild of the church as a burial site. He created a shrine for Edward the Confessor and had his remains brought there for burial. And of course he had himself buried there as well (after his death, of course) in 1272. The rebuild wasn't finished at this time, and nobody seemed too interested in resuming it after Henry's death, so the church kept its old Romanesque nave until Richard II had it demolished and rebuilt in Gothic style late in the 14th Century. Early in the 16th Century, Henry VII added a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (now called the Henry VII Chapel or the "Lady Chapel"), which brought the church to the length it has today.

Things became a little dicey for the abbey later in the 16th Century after Henry VIII separated the country from the Catholic church in 1534, making himself head of the Church of England (and the spiritual leader of all of his subjects).

Under Henry's orders, most abbeys and monasteries in England were dissolved and forced to forfeit their assets to the crown (of all places). But Westminster Abbey was spared this fate, as Henry declared it to be a cathedral of the newly-formed Westminster diocese. It was not allowed to function as an abbey, however, and the Benedictines were expelled. Henry's daughter (by Catherine of Aragon) and eventual queen (following half-brother Edward VI, who succeeded Henry), Mary I, remained a Catholic on ascending to the throne in 1553 and tried to restore the country to Catholicism, in the process bringing the Benedictines back to Westminster. But despite Mary's best efforts (she had 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake, earning her the nickname "Bloody Mary"), she was unable to fully return the country to its former faith during her brief five-year reign, which ended in 1558. At this time she was succeeded by Henry's other daughter (by Anne Boleyn), Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was a staunch Protestant and sent the Benedictines packing again. It was Elizabeth who assigned the abbey the "Royal Peculiar" status it has retained through the present day.

Following our adventure with the London Eye, we set off to visit the Royal Peculiar. This involved a crossing of the Thames via the Westminster Bridge, at the end of which we encountered Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

The official name for the building in which the Parliament of the United Kingdom meets is the Palace of Westminster. The present neo-Gothic building was constructed between 1840 and 1876, replacing a medieval building which was destroyed by fire in 1834. The building is instantly recognizable by anyone with even a passing familiarity with England or the United Kingdom, especially when viewed along with its clock tower. "Big Ben" is technically the name of the largest bell inside the tower, but the name is commonly used to refer to the entire tower structure. The tower's official name is the Elizabeth Tower, a name assigned in 2012 as a celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

Across the street from Parliament is a more-or-less permanent encampment of protestors (to be expected these days), and beyond the protestors is a smallish church called the Church of St. Margaret, originally founded in the 12th Century as a parish church. The church was rebuilt from 1486 to 1523 at the instigation of Henry VII, around the same time he was elongating Westminster Abbey. Until 1972, St. Margaret's was the Anglican parish church of the House of Commons, but in 1972 it was made a part of the Westminster Abbey complex. St. Margaret's is somewhat overwhelmed by the gigantic church just to its south, but it does have a certain amount of history of its own. Weddings of some historical figures have taken place here, including those of Samuel Pepys, John Milton, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan and Lord Louis Mountbatten. It's not the massive tomb that its neighbor is, but it is the final resting place of Sir Walter Raleigh, among others.

Beyond St. Margaret's, of course, is the abbey itself. The church has an east-west orientation, and the main entrance is on its north side, through the north transept.


Tickets can be purchased at the entrance, though they are also available online for a slight discount. They're a little pricey for church tickets (currently more than 20 pounds per adult), but this isn't just any church. Also at the entrance are signs prohibiting photography inside the church, a restriction about which they appear to be serious. The church interior pictures on this page came from Wikimedia Commons, and were taken by people other than us.

Entering at the north transept (the left side of the church on the layout above) puts you roughly in the middle of the church. To the right is the choir (spelled "quire" in the documentation for some reason) and the nave as rebuilt by Richard II in the 14th Century. Toward the western end of the nave there is a chapel devoted to St. George, and in this chapel there is an old wooden chair. This is the Coronation Chair, on which all English/British monarchs have been crowned since the 14th Century. A built-in compartment under the seat is designed to hold the Stone of Scone, a block of red sandstone on which monarchs of Scotland are crowned. The Stone of Scone is currently kept at Edinburgh Castle, but it will be fetched back to London when it's time to crown the next monarch.

The other end of the church is mostly occupied by the Lady Chapel, with some smaller side chapels. Some royal tombs can be found in the side chapels, including those of Elizabeth I and Mary I. Mary, Queen of Scots is also found here. In the middle of the nave there is a shrine to Edward the Confessor.

The south transept is largely devoted to a space known as Poets' Corner. This is where the memorials and burial places of most of the literary figures can be found.

There is more to Westminster Abbey than the church, and a doorway near the south transept takes you into this area. It also takes you out of the area (the church) where photography is forbidden, so stand by for more pictures. First up is the cloister area, where cloisters surround a grassy courtyard.


From the eastern cloister there is access to a large, octagonal structure called the Chapter House. The Chapter House dates back to the 13th Century, and was originally used as a meeting place for the Benedictine monks. There is a single support column in the middle of the structure, and it's surrounded by stained-glass windows and the remnants of 14th Century religious paintings. During our visit, the Chapter House was being guarded by an orange pussycat.




Farther down the eastern cloister there is a doorway leading to the Pyx Chamber. The Pyx Chamber is now a primitive-looking chapel, but it was once used as secure storage for the Pyx and related objects. An annual ceremony called the Trial of the Pyx has long been performed in which a jury examines newly-minted coins to make sure they conform to established metallurgical standards. The ceremony has taken place in different locations, but in all cases the coins to be tested are presented in a chest called the Pyx (once kept in the Pyx Chamber). These days the ceremony is pretty much a formality, but it's still done regularly.

From the Pyx Chamber, we made our way over to the West Cloister, where we had some different things to look at.




Eventually we exited the abbey and found ourselves outside the church's western doorway, at the base of the nave. This gave us a nice look at the church's twin towers (added between 1722 and 1745) and western façade. Above the doorway are statues of ten 20th Century martyrs. Not all of the martyrs are British – for example, martyr number 5 from the left is Martin Luther King, Jr.


We looked around a little in the square in from of the western doorway and then headed back toward the London Eye. At the time we bought our London Eye tickets, we also bought tickets to a guided cruise along the Thames, and our boat was to depart from a floating dock in front of the Ferris wheel. Continue on to the next page to see how this worked out.