50 Fun Facts About Westminster Abbey

What is Westminster Abbey's formal title?

The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter has had no monks since Elizabeth I removed them in 1559, yet everyone still calls it an abbey. Henry VIII even made it a cathedral, and for ten years it had its own bishop.

Whose coronation on Christmas Day 1066 is the first documented at Westminster Abbey?

William the Conqueror's guards outside mistook the shouts of acclamation for an attack and set fire to nearby houses. Smoke filled the abbey and the congregation fled while the clergy finished the service.

Which medieval work shows Edward the Confessor's body being carried to his newly built Westminster Abbey?

The Bayeux Tapestry shows his church with a central tower, consecrated barely a week before he died. The king who built it had been too ill to attend the ceremony.

Westminster Abbey's present Gothic church was begun in 1245 on the orders of which king?

Henry III wanted a grand shrine for his favourite saint, with room for his own tomb nearby. He died with the work unfinished, and the old Norman nave stayed attached to his far taller church for over a century.

Westminster Abbey originally stood on an islet in the Thames known as what?

Thorney Island was cut off from the bank by the branches of a small river. That stream now runs through underground pipes, so the island under the abbey can no longer be seen.

Westminster Abbey's monks, there from the 10th century until 1559, belonged to which order?

Benedictine monks from Westminster once grew their vegetables in a walled garden that London still calls Covent Garden, from an old form of the word 'convent'.

Since 1560, Westminster Abbey has answered directly to whom?

The sovereign became its only overseer when Elizabeth I, having removed the last monks, refounded the abbey by charter in 1560. No bishop or archbishop has had any say there since, which makes it a 'royal peculiar'.

Westminster Abbey's Gothic design is chiefly modelled on churches from which country?

France set the fashion: the king wanted to match the great churches rising at Reims, Amiens and Chartres. The rounded east end ringed with chapels is their idea; English churches of the day ended square.

Westminster Abbey's nave, braced by flying buttresses, holds what distinction among England's Gothic churches?

It is the highest, at about 31 metres, and it looks higher still because the nave is far narrower than any other medieval English church of that height.

Which former clerk of Christopher Wren designed Westminster Abbey's two west towers, completed in 1745?

Nicholas Hawksmoor was a leader of the English Baroque, yet he drew the towers to suit the medieval Gothic church. He died in 1736, nine years before they were finished.

Westminster Abbey's Henry VII Chapel, with its fan-vaulted ceiling, is a celebrated example of which style?

Perpendicular Gothic masons hid the ceiling's trick: the stone pendants that seem to hang in mid-air are wedged into arches half-concealed in the vault. A Tudor writer called the chapel the wonder of the world.

Westminster Abbey's Tudor chapel was built to house the remains of which king its founder wanted canonised?

Henry VI was never made a saint and his body never left Windsor, so the chapel meant for his shrine became the burial place of the king who built it.

The sculptor of Henry VII's tomb at Westminster Abbey had to leave Florence after breaking whose nose?

Michelangelo carried the flattened nose for the rest of his life. Pietro Torrigiano, the fellow student who punched him, went on to make the gilt bronze effigies of the Tudor king and queen.

With the Garter based at Windsor, which order of chivalry has its home in Westminster Abbey's Henry VII Chapel?

The Bath has more knights than the chapel has stalls, so some wait many years to be installed beneath their own banner. The chapel has been the order's church since 1725.

Westminster Abbey's Cosmati pavement, on which monarchs are crowned, was laid by craftsmen brought from which city?

Rome supplied both the craftsmen and the stone: the abbot himself brought workmen and purple porphyry home from the city. A brass inscription set into the floor calculates when the world will end.

In the 14th century, which body held meetings in the monks' chapter house at Westminster Abbey?

The House of Commons used the monks' meeting room for a few years, then moved on to their dining hall. After the monks left, the chapter house stored state records for three centuries.

Tree-ring dating showed that Britain's oldest door, at Westminster Abbey, was made in which period?

Anglo-Saxon carpenters made it in the 1050s for the church that stood here before. When the abbey was rebuilt two centuries later the door was kept, cut down to fit and hung again.

Westminster Abbey's Pyx Chamber is named after the wooden boxes that once held what there?

Newly minted coins were locked in the boxes until a jury tested their metal at the Trial of the Pyx. The medieval ceremony is still held every year, and it still puts the Royal Mint in the dock.

Which king had the Coronation Chair made around the Stone of Scone he had seized from the Scots?

Edward I first ordered the chair in bronze, then changed his mind and had it made of oak, painted and gilded. It has served at coronations for seven centuries.

Which queen sat in the Coronation Chair a second time, at her Golden Jubilee service in Westminster Abbey?

Queen Victoria wore her widow's black instead of coronation robes for the 1887 service, and the medieval chair was given a dark coat for the day.

Who is blamed for the initials and graffiti carved into the Coronation Chair?

Tourists, choirboys and schoolboys all left their names in the 1700s and 1800s, when visitors could sit in the chair. One of them carved that he had slept in it overnight in July 1800.

In 1914 the Coronation Chair was damaged by a bomb thought to have been planted by whom?

Suffragettes are thought to have planted it during their campaign for the vote. The blast blew a corner off the 600-year-old chair, yet nobody in the abbey was seriously hurt.

Where did the Stone of Scone turn up in April 1951, months after students took it from Westminster Abbey?

Arbroath was a pointed choice: the Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland's assertion of nationhood in 1320, carries its name. The four students who took the stone on Christmas Day 1950 left it at the abbey's altar.

Where was the Stone of Scone kept from 1996?

Edinburgh Castle kept it beside the Scottish crown jewels until 2024, when it moved to a museum in Perth. It still travels south for coronations, as it did in 2023.

The pupils of Westminster School have the duty of shouting what during a coronation?

Vivat Rex or Vivat Regina, Latin for 'long live the King' or 'Queen', is shouted as the monarch walks through the choir. The scholars' cries are written into the entrance anthem, 'I was glad'.

What happened in 1661 to Oliver Cromwell's body, buried in Westminster Abbey?

It was dug up and hanged at Tyburn on the anniversary of Charles I's execution. The head was then cut off and stuck on a spike at Westminster Hall, where it stayed for more than twenty years.

Scaffolding put up for which king's 1685 coronation knocked a hole in Edward the Confessor's coffin?

James II was handed a gold crucifix and chain that a member of the abbey choir fished out through the hole. Nobody knows where the cross is today.

Who was the last monarch to be buried in Westminster Abbey?

George II asked for the facing sides of his coffin and his wife Caroline's to be removed so that their dust could mingle. The monarchs after him chose to be buried at Windsor.

Who was the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, around 1400?

Geoffrey Chaucer probably owed the grave to his royal service and his house in the abbey grounds, not to his verse. Only when Edmund Spenser was buried beside him two centuries later did a poets' corner begin.

Which writer's statue reached Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner 124 years after his death?

Shakespeare stayed in his Stratford-upon-Avon grave, though there was talk soon after his death of moving him to the abbey. Benefit performances of his plays at two London theatres helped to pay for the statue.

Which playwright is buried standing upright in the nave of Westminster Abbey?

Ben Jonson died poor, and the upright grave is said to be all the space he asked for. A passer-by is said to have paid a mason eighteen pence to carve 'O rare Ben Johnson' on the bare stone.

Which composer is buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey?

George Frideric Handel had long since earned his place: 'Zadok the Priest', which he wrote for the coronation held in the abbey in 1727, has been sung at every coronation since.

Westminster Abbey refused to let which film shoot there, calling the novel behind it 'theologically unsound'?

The Da Vinci Code was 'a real page turner', the abbey admitted, but it gave its guides fact sheets to correct the novel's errors. The film shot its abbey scenes in Lincoln Cathedral instead.

Stephen Hawking's ashes lie in Westminster Abbey between the graves of which two scientists?

Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin lie close by. As the ashes were laid to rest, Hawking's voice, set to music, was beamed from a dish in Spain towards one of the nearest known black holes.

The Unknown Warrior was buried in Westminster Abbey on the second anniversary of what?

The Armistice had silenced the guns on 11 November 1918. At the burial a hundred holders of the Victoria Cross lined the nave, and the guests of honour were women who had lost husbands and sons.

The Unknown Warrior's grave is the only tombstone in Westminster Abbey that is what?

Forbidden to walk on, the stone lies ringed with red poppies just inside the west door, and processions pass around it. Visiting heads of state come to lay a wreath there.

The idea of the Unknown Warrior came from David Railton, who was what?

An army chaplain on the Western Front, he had seen a rough cross in a garden pencilled 'An Unknown British Soldier'. Four years later, in 1920, he put his idea in a letter to the Dean of Westminster.

Which royal bride began the tradition of leaving her bouquet on the Unknown Warrior's grave?

Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Mother, laid her flowers there on her way in to be married in 1923: she had lost a brother in the war. Royal brides have sent theirs to the grave ever since.

Which royal bride's wedding lined Westminster Abbey's aisle with living trees?

Catherine Middleton walked to the altar in 2011 between six field maples and two hornbeams, an avenue chosen to reflect the couple's love of the English countryside.

Which song did Elton John rewrite for Diana's funeral at Westminster Abbey?

'Candle in the Wind' began in 1973 as a song about Marilyn Monroe, who like Diana died at 36. Its opening words, 'Goodbye Norma Jean', became 'Goodbye England's rose'.

Who pulled the gun carriage that carried Elizabeth II's coffin to her funeral in Westminster Abbey?

Royal Navy sailors have hauled the gun carriage at state funerals since 1901, when the horses could not pull it at a royal funeral and a naval party took over with improvised ropes.

Westminster Abbey shares its World Heritage listing with St Margaret's Church and which neighbouring building?

The Houses of Parliament, properly the Palace of Westminster, were listed with the abbey in 1987. So was little St Margaret's, which the monks built next door so that local worshippers would stop disturbing their services.

Which American is one of ten 20th-century Christians honoured with statues over Westminster Abbey's west door?

Martin Luther King Jr. stands there with nine other modern martyrs, among them Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero. The niches they fill had waited empty since the Middle Ages.

Westminster Abbey's Weston Tower, finished in 2018, takes visitors up to what?

The triforium galleries now hold the abbey's museum. Its strangest exhibits are life-size figures of dead monarchs, made to ride on their coffins at the funeral, some still in their original clothes.

Which artist designed a 2018 stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey celebrating Elizabeth II's reign?

David Hockney had never worked in stained glass, so he drew the hawthorn blossom on an iPad: its screen is lit from behind, just as a window is.

What destroyed the roof lantern over Westminster Abbey's crossing, leaving the church open to the sky?

A German bomb, one of the incendiaries dropped on the night of 10 May 1941, burned out the lantern roof. Nobody was killed, and the abbey went on holding services throughout the war.

Which novelist was buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner at a private service in 1870?

Charles Dickens had the plain funeral he wanted: a handful of mourners early in the morning, with no announcement. Only afterwards did the crowds come, and the grave was soon heaped with flowers.

Which explorer was buried in Westminster Abbey after his companions carried his body out of central Africa?

David Livingstone's heart stayed behind: his companions Chuma and Susi buried it under a tree near where he died before setting out for the coast with his body.

The memorial window in Westminster Abbey's RAF Chapel honours the airmen who died in which battle?

The Battle of Britain was fought in the summer and autumn of 1940, and the chapel remembers the airmen who died in it. Lord Dowding, who led Fighter Command through the battle, had his ashes buried beneath their window.

Which diarist visited Westminster Abbey in 1669 and saw the unburied body of Queen Catherine de Valois?

Samuel Pepys did more than look: he recorded that he was allowed to kiss the long-dead queen. Her body had lain above ground in an open coffin since the old chapel was pulled down in the early 1500s.