The Abbey at night, from Dean's Yard ()
Formally titled The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, this mainly Gothic church, on the scale of a cathedral, in London is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English monarchs.
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2 Coronations 3 Burials 4 Schools 5 Transport 6 See also 7 External links |
History
First built by Edward the Confessor between 1045 - 1065 in the Norman style, it replaced an earlier church on the same site. It was built as an abbey for the Benedictine monks and was consecrated on December 28, 1065. It was rebuilt in the Gothic style between 1245 - 1517, with Henry VII adding a perpendicular style chapel in 1503.
Westminster Abbey
In 1579, Elizabeth I re-established Westminster as a "royal peculiar" -- a church responsible directly to the sovereign, rather than the Archbishop of Canterbury -- and made it a school, the Collegiate Church of St. Peter. Since then, the head has been not a bishop (although the Abbey is the seat of the Bishop of London) but a dean, appointed by the monarch. Until the 19th century, Westminster was the third seat of learning in England, after Oxford and Cambridge. It was here that the first third of the King James Bible Old Testament and the last half of the New Testament were translated.
Coronations
William the Conqueror was the first monarch crowned in the Abbey and all subsequent English monarchs (except Lady Jane Grey, Edward V and Edward VIII, who did not have coronations) have been crowned there. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the traditional cleric in the coronation ceremony.
Burials
The church contains the bones of St Edward the Confessor as well as the remains of many other famous people. These include:
- Robert Adam
- Clement Attlee
- Robert Browning
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Charles Darwin
- Charles Dickens
- John Dryden
- William Ewart Gladstone
- George Friderich Handel
- Dr Samuel Johnson
- Ben Jonson
- Lord Kelvin
- Rudyard Kipling
- David Livingstone
- Isaac Newton
- Laurence Olivier
- William Pitt the Younger
- William Pitt the Elder
- Henry Purcell
- Ernest Rutherford
- Edmund Spenser
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
Schools
Westminster School and Westminster Abbey Choir School are also on the grounds of the Abbey. Westminster School was originally founded by the Benedictine monks in 1179.
Transport
Nearest London Underground stations:
- St James' Park (District, Circle lines)
- Westminster (Jubilee, District, Circle lines)
