Westminster Abbey, City of Westminster
I had unfinished business here.
Jools and I were here at the end of October, since then I have regretted leaving early before having taken more shots. So, when Jools said she had a course in Deal, rather than kick my heels at home, I said I would like to go back to London. I asked a fellow Flickrite, Graham, if he fancied meeting up.
He did.
So, just before ten we meet outside, and once inside we split up as it was his firs time, and I wanted to go straight to the Lady Chapel.
Not many people about, so I could get the shots I wanted, making my way all the time further east.
Its funny, I thought I'd recorded it well on my first visit, but I see many more details and views opening up.
Into the Lady Chapel, the light is glorious, pouting in through plain and stained glass, ranks of banners hanging down, and seats in the quire adorned with figures of brightly coloured animals, castles and bolts of lightning.
Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots slumber on still, separated by the steps leading to the Lady Chapel, surrounded by the tombs of their courtiers.
After going round with the 50mm lens, I went round the other way with the big lens, snapping details unseen for the most part.
-------------------------------------------
Some three months ago, Jools and I went up to London to visit Westminster Abbey, where I took a lots of shots, but got "curched out". Two weeks ago we were to meet a friend, Graham when we went to the Tate, then he tested positive for COVID the morning of the trip, so couldn't go.
I promised him we would return soon, to London.
Sooner than I thought, as it turned out. As Jools had a class in Deal on Saturday afternoon, so I could go up to London on the train, go tot he Abbey, take another load of shots, meet Graham and then we could go to the pub.
Brilliant.
Even better when Graham said he could make it, so the plan was made; meet outside the Abbey at ten. Take shots. Walk to pub. Drink beer. Come home.
Simple plan with clear goals.
Jools did shopping on Friday afternoon so all we had to do was get up and be at the station for ten to eight.
We got up, had a coffee, fed the cats and so on. I dodged breakfast planning on getting something out.
Jools dropped me off at half seven, just before sunrise. Frosty but clear, so I went onto the platform to take some shots before mine was due at ten to.
Not many people about, most waiting to go to Ramsgate, or stations between there and Dover, I snapped their train come in, pause to pick them up, then wait for the road to be clear.
The train doesn't really fill up that much, I guess about 50%, for a train getting into London at about nine on a Saturday, should be packed. Still early days, I guess.
Anyway, it was light so I could look out of the large windows, andmark our progress through Folkestone, Ashford to Ebbsfleet then under the river into Essex. Away on the left, Canary Wharf stand bathed in warm sunlight, still 15 miles away, like some 21st century version of Mordor.
I leave the train at Stratford, and instead of walking through Westfield, I take the DLR to Stratford. Or would have done only to see on pull out of the station as I come down the escalator, leaving me with ten minutes to wait. No matter, I have time.
I get out at Stratford and cross to the Jubilee Line, where in the train, most are wearing masks, and people keeping their distances.
A half hour run across the East End to London Bridge, Waterloo and into Westminster, where I get out and go to street level, taking off my mask once safely outside and breath in the fresh air.
I walk round Parliament Square, past the Houses of Parliament with Big Ben (I know not its real name) now partially revealed having had its scaffolding removed, the repainted face and new guilding glistened in the sunlight, though the west face was ten minutes behind the north one.
As I walked towards the entrance to the Abbey, I saw my friend, Graham on the other side fo the road waiting to cross, I hail him and once he's safely over we shake hands.
After taking some exterior shots, we go in and spit up, as its his first time and my second.
I have a list of targets, mainly redoing Henry VII's Lady Chapel as I only did that with the wide angle last time, then going around with the big lens for details of the windows and tombs.
After an hours and a half, we were both done. On the way out I point out some other details, including the Chapter House and pass what we see i s labelled "the oldest door in Brit dating to AD1060!
What shall we do?
Walk along the river to the Black Friar.
Good idea.
Though we stop for a coffee at the van outside, and was really good coffee indeed.
-------------------------------------------
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, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and a burial site for English and, later, British monarchs.
The building itself was originally a Catholic Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539. Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral and seat of the catholic bishop. After 1560 the building was no longer an abbey or a cathedral, after the Catholics had been driven out by King Henry VIII, having instead was granted the status of a Church of England "Royal Peculiar"—a church responsible directly to the sovereign—by Queen Elizabeth I.
According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site (then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island)) in the seventh century at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245 on the orders of King Henry III.[4]
Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have occurred in Westminster Abbey.[4][5] Sixteen royal weddings have occurred at the Abbey since 1100.[6]
The Abbey is the burial site of more than 3300 persons, usually of prominence in British history: at least 16 monarchs, 8 Prime Ministers, poets laureate, actors, scientists, military leaders, and the Unknown Warrior. As such, Westminster Abbey is sometimes described as "Britain's Valhalla", after the iconic hall of the chosen heroes in Norse mythology.
Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. 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.[9] A week later, he was buried in the church; and, nine years later, his wife Edith was buried alongside him.[10] 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.[11]
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacent Palace of Westminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry. 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.
The abbot and monks, in proximity to the royal Palace of Westminster, the seat of government from the later 13th century, became a powerful force in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. 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. Released from the burdens of spiritual leadership, which passed to the reformed Cluniac movement after the mid-10th century, and occupied with the administration of great landed properties, some of which lay far from Westminster, "the Benedictines achieved a remarkable degree of identification with the secular life of their times, and particularly with upper-class life", Barbara Harvey concludes, to the extent that her depiction of daily life provides a wider view of the concerns of the English gentry in the High and Late Middle Ages.[13]
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 remained Lord of the Manor of Westminster as a town of two to three thousand persons grew around it: as a consumer and employer on a grand scale the monastery helped fuel the town economy, and relations with the town remained unusually cordial, but no enfranchising charter was issued during the Middle Ages.[14]
The abbey became the coronation site of Norman kings. None were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult of the Confessor, rebuilt the abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England. The Confessor's shrine subsequently played a great part in his canonization.
The following English, Scottish and British monarchs and their consorts are buried in the Abbey:
Sæberht of Essex (d. c. 616) [possibly]
Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) and Edith of Wessex (d. 1075)
Henry III of England (d. 1272) [his wife, Eleanor of Provence, is buried at Amesbury Priory]
Edward I of England (d. 1307) and Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290)
Edward III of England (d. 1377) and Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369)
Richard II of England (d. 1400) and Anne of Bohemia (d. 1394)
Henry V of England (d. 1422) and Catherine of Valois (d. 1437)
Edward V of England (d. c. 1483) and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York (d. c. 1483) [possibly]
Also known as the Princes in the Tower. In 1674, the remains of two boys were exhumed from the Tower of London and at the orders of Charles II, they were interred in the wall of the Henry VII Lady Chapel.
Anne Neville (d. 1485), wife of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales [m. 1470–71; buried at Tewkesbury Abbey] and of Richard III [m. 1472–85; buried at Leicester Cathedral]
Henry VII of England (d. 1509) and Elizabeth of York (d. 1503)
Edward VI of England (d. 1553)
Anne of Cleves (d. 1557), former wife of Henry VIII [buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle]
Mary I of England (d. 1558)
Elizabeth I of England as shown on her tomb
Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1542), mother of James VI & I of England and Scotland [brought from Peterborough Cathedral in 1612]
Elizabeth I of England (d. 1603)
In the 19th century, researchers looking for the tomb of James I partially opened the underground vault containing the remains of Elizabeth I and Mary I of England. The lead coffins were stacked, with Elizabeth's resting on top of her half-sister's.[9]
James VI & I of England and Scotland (d. 1625) and Anne of Denmark (d. 1619)
The position of the tomb of King James was lost for two and a half centuries. In the 19th century, following an excavation of many of the vaults beneath the floor, the lead coffin was found in the Henry VII vault.[9]
Charles II of England and Scotland (d. 1685)
Mary II of England and Scotland (d. 1694) and William III of England and II of Scotland (d. 1702)
Anne, Queen of Great Britain (d. 1714) and Prince George of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland (d. 1708)
George II of Great Britain (d. 1760) and Caroline of Ansbach (d. 1737)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burials_and_memorials_in_Westminste...
Westminster Abbey, City of Westminster
I had unfinished business here.
Jools and I were here at the end of October, since then I have regretted leaving early before having taken more shots. So, when Jools said she had a course in Deal, rather than kick my heels at home, I said I would like to go back to London. I asked a fellow Flickrite, Graham, if he fancied meeting up.
He did.
So, just before ten we meet outside, and once inside we split up as it was his firs time, and I wanted to go straight to the Lady Chapel.
Not many people about, so I could get the shots I wanted, making my way all the time further east.
Its funny, I thought I'd recorded it well on my first visit, but I see many more details and views opening up.
Into the Lady Chapel, the light is glorious, pouting in through plain and stained glass, ranks of banners hanging down, and seats in the quire adorned with figures of brightly coloured animals, castles and bolts of lightning.
Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots slumber on still, separated by the steps leading to the Lady Chapel, surrounded by the tombs of their courtiers.
After going round with the 50mm lens, I went round the other way with the big lens, snapping details unseen for the most part.
-------------------------------------------
Some three months ago, Jools and I went up to London to visit Westminster Abbey, where I took a lots of shots, but got "curched out". Two weeks ago we were to meet a friend, Graham when we went to the Tate, then he tested positive for COVID the morning of the trip, so couldn't go.
I promised him we would return soon, to London.
Sooner than I thought, as it turned out. As Jools had a class in Deal on Saturday afternoon, so I could go up to London on the train, go tot he Abbey, take another load of shots, meet Graham and then we could go to the pub.
Brilliant.
Even better when Graham said he could make it, so the plan was made; meet outside the Abbey at ten. Take shots. Walk to pub. Drink beer. Come home.
Simple plan with clear goals.
Jools did shopping on Friday afternoon so all we had to do was get up and be at the station for ten to eight.
We got up, had a coffee, fed the cats and so on. I dodged breakfast planning on getting something out.
Jools dropped me off at half seven, just before sunrise. Frosty but clear, so I went onto the platform to take some shots before mine was due at ten to.
Not many people about, most waiting to go to Ramsgate, or stations between there and Dover, I snapped their train come in, pause to pick them up, then wait for the road to be clear.
The train doesn't really fill up that much, I guess about 50%, for a train getting into London at about nine on a Saturday, should be packed. Still early days, I guess.
Anyway, it was light so I could look out of the large windows, andmark our progress through Folkestone, Ashford to Ebbsfleet then under the river into Essex. Away on the left, Canary Wharf stand bathed in warm sunlight, still 15 miles away, like some 21st century version of Mordor.
I leave the train at Stratford, and instead of walking through Westfield, I take the DLR to Stratford. Or would have done only to see on pull out of the station as I come down the escalator, leaving me with ten minutes to wait. No matter, I have time.
I get out at Stratford and cross to the Jubilee Line, where in the train, most are wearing masks, and people keeping their distances.
A half hour run across the East End to London Bridge, Waterloo and into Westminster, where I get out and go to street level, taking off my mask once safely outside and breath in the fresh air.
I walk round Parliament Square, past the Houses of Parliament with Big Ben (I know not its real name) now partially revealed having had its scaffolding removed, the repainted face and new guilding glistened in the sunlight, though the west face was ten minutes behind the north one.
As I walked towards the entrance to the Abbey, I saw my friend, Graham on the other side fo the road waiting to cross, I hail him and once he's safely over we shake hands.
After taking some exterior shots, we go in and spit up, as its his first time and my second.
I have a list of targets, mainly redoing Henry VII's Lady Chapel as I only did that with the wide angle last time, then going around with the big lens for details of the windows and tombs.
After an hours and a half, we were both done. On the way out I point out some other details, including the Chapter House and pass what we see i s labelled "the oldest door in Brit dating to AD1060!
What shall we do?
Walk along the river to the Black Friar.
Good idea.
Though we stop for a coffee at the van outside, and was really good coffee indeed.
-------------------------------------------
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, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and a burial site for English and, later, British monarchs.
The building itself was originally a Catholic Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539. Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral and seat of the catholic bishop. After 1560 the building was no longer an abbey or a cathedral, after the Catholics had been driven out by King Henry VIII, having instead was granted the status of a Church of England "Royal Peculiar"—a church responsible directly to the sovereign—by Queen Elizabeth I.
According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site (then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island)) in the seventh century at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245 on the orders of King Henry III.[4]
Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have occurred in Westminster Abbey.[4][5] Sixteen royal weddings have occurred at the Abbey since 1100.[6]
The Abbey is the burial site of more than 3300 persons, usually of prominence in British history: at least 16 monarchs, 8 Prime Ministers, poets laureate, actors, scientists, military leaders, and the Unknown Warrior. As such, Westminster Abbey is sometimes described as "Britain's Valhalla", after the iconic hall of the chosen heroes in Norse mythology.
Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. 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.[9] A week later, he was buried in the church; and, nine years later, his wife Edith was buried alongside him.[10] 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.[11]
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacent Palace of Westminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry. 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.
The abbot and monks, in proximity to the royal Palace of Westminster, the seat of government from the later 13th century, became a powerful force in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. 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. Released from the burdens of spiritual leadership, which passed to the reformed Cluniac movement after the mid-10th century, and occupied with the administration of great landed properties, some of which lay far from Westminster, "the Benedictines achieved a remarkable degree of identification with the secular life of their times, and particularly with upper-class life", Barbara Harvey concludes, to the extent that her depiction of daily life provides a wider view of the concerns of the English gentry in the High and Late Middle Ages.[13]
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 remained Lord of the Manor of Westminster as a town of two to three thousand persons grew around it: as a consumer and employer on a grand scale the monastery helped fuel the town economy, and relations with the town remained unusually cordial, but no enfranchising charter was issued during the Middle Ages.[14]
The abbey became the coronation site of Norman kings. None were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult of the Confessor, rebuilt the abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England. The Confessor's shrine subsequently played a great part in his canonization.
The following English, Scottish and British monarchs and their consorts are buried in the Abbey:
Sæberht of Essex (d. c. 616) [possibly]
Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) and Edith of Wessex (d. 1075)
Henry III of England (d. 1272) [his wife, Eleanor of Provence, is buried at Amesbury Priory]
Edward I of England (d. 1307) and Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290)
Edward III of England (d. 1377) and Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369)
Richard II of England (d. 1400) and Anne of Bohemia (d. 1394)
Henry V of England (d. 1422) and Catherine of Valois (d. 1437)
Edward V of England (d. c. 1483) and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York (d. c. 1483) [possibly]
Also known as the Princes in the Tower. In 1674, the remains of two boys were exhumed from the Tower of London and at the orders of Charles II, they were interred in the wall of the Henry VII Lady Chapel.
Anne Neville (d. 1485), wife of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales [m. 1470–71; buried at Tewkesbury Abbey] and of Richard III [m. 1472–85; buried at Leicester Cathedral]
Henry VII of England (d. 1509) and Elizabeth of York (d. 1503)
Edward VI of England (d. 1553)
Anne of Cleves (d. 1557), former wife of Henry VIII [buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle]
Mary I of England (d. 1558)
Elizabeth I of England as shown on her tomb
Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1542), mother of James VI & I of England and Scotland [brought from Peterborough Cathedral in 1612]
Elizabeth I of England (d. 1603)
In the 19th century, researchers looking for the tomb of James I partially opened the underground vault containing the remains of Elizabeth I and Mary I of England. The lead coffins were stacked, with Elizabeth's resting on top of her half-sister's.[9]
James VI & I of England and Scotland (d. 1625) and Anne of Denmark (d. 1619)
The position of the tomb of King James was lost for two and a half centuries. In the 19th century, following an excavation of many of the vaults beneath the floor, the lead coffin was found in the Henry VII vault.[9]
Charles II of England and Scotland (d. 1685)
Mary II of England and Scotland (d. 1694) and William III of England and II of Scotland (d. 1702)
Anne, Queen of Great Britain (d. 1714) and Prince George of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland (d. 1708)
George II of Great Britain (d. 1760) and Caroline of Ansbach (d. 1737)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burials_and_memorials_in_Westminste...