Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England. It is one of the United Kingdom’s most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. The recorded origins of the Abbey date to the 960s or early 970s, when Saint Dunstan and King Edgar installed a community of Benedictine monks on the site. Construction of the present church began in 1245, on the orders of King Henry III.
About Westminster Abbey in brief
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England. It is one of the United Kingdom’s most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. Construction of the present church began in 1245, on the orders of King Henry III. Since 1560, the building is no longer an abbey or a cathedral, having instead the status of a Church of England \”Royal Peculiar\”—a church responsible directly to the sovereign. As the burial site of more than 3,300 persons, usually of prominence in British history, Westminster Abbey is sometimes described as ‘Britain’s Valhalla’, after the iconic hall of the chosen heroes in Norse mythology. The recorded origins of the Abbey date to the 960s or early 970s, when Saint Dunstan and King Edgar installed a community of Benedictine monks on the site. Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter’s Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. His successor, Harold II, was probably crowned in the abbey, although the first documented coronation is that of William the Conqueror later the same year. The abbot and monks became a powerful force in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. The proximity of the Palace of Westminster did not extend to providing monks or abbots with high royal connections; in social origin the Benedictines of Westminster were as modest as most of the order.
The Abbot of Westminster often was employed on royal service and in due course took his place in the House of Lords as of right. As a town of two to three thousand persons grew around it, the monastery helped fuel the town economy, and with the town remained unusually cordial, but no enfranchising charter was issued during the Middle Ages. None of the Norman kings were buried there until Henry III, who selected the site for his coronation as a shrine for his Confessor, rebuilt the ab Abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a suitably regal setting for his tomb. The present church is the highest Gothic nave in England, under the nave’s highest nave. It was the first church in England built in the Romanesque style. The building was completed around 1060 and was consecrated on 28 December 1065, only a week before Edward’s death on 5 January 1066. Some of the lower parts of the monastic dormitory, an extension of the South Transept, survive in the Norman Undercroft of the Great School, including a door said to come from the previous Saxon abbey. Increased endowments supported a community that increased from a dozen monks in Dunstan’s original foundation, up to a maximum of about eighty monks. There have been 16 royal weddings at the ab monastery since 1100. The only extant depiction of Edward’s ab Abbey, together with the adjacent Palace ofminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry.
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This page is based on the article Westminster Abbey published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
