Westminster Abbey, one of Britain’s greatest medieval buildings and among the best-known churches in the world, has a history stretching back over a thousand years. Founded as a Benedictine monastery in the mid-tenth century and with the shrine of its principal royal founder, St Edward the Confessor (died 1066), at its heart, it is also the coronation church where monarchs have been crowned amid great splendour since 1066.
Neither a cathedral nor a parish church, Westminster Abbey was established as a ‘Royal Peculiar’ in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth I. It means that the Abbey is outside the jurisdiction and responsibility of the Church of England and that the Abbey receives no regular funding from the Crown, the Church of England or the government.
The present church, begun by Henry III in 1245 is a treasure house of architectural and artistic achievement on which each succeeding century has left its mark.
Fifteen out of the thirty-nine sovereigns crowned in Westminster Abbey also lie buried within its walls. Their medieval and Renaissance tombs, though among the most important in Europe, form only a small part of the extraordinary collection of gravestones, memorials and monumental sculpture for which the Abbey has long been famous.
Many of the significant individuals in British history are remembered here: royalty and aristocracy, clergy and politicians, writers, scientists and musicians. They include Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, George Frederick Handel and William Gladstone.
Fifteen royal weddings have taken place in Westminster Abbey since King Henry I and Princess Matilda of Scotland married on 11 November 1100. They include HM The Queen and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (20 November 1947), King George VI and Lady Elizabeth Bowes later to become the Queen Mother (26 April 1923), Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones (6 May 1960), Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson (23 July 1986) and Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips (14 November 1973).
