Q 01/05

What is Westminster Abbey's formal title?

A) The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul

B) The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter

C) The Royal Chapel of Saint Edward

D) The Minster Church of Saint George

Answer · why

B) The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter

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 ma...

Q 02/05

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

A) Harold Godwinson

B) William the Conqueror

C) William Rufus

D) Edgar Ætheling

Answer · why

B) William the Conqueror

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 c...

Q 03/05

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

A) The Luttrell Psalter

B) The Lindisfarne Gospels

C) The Bayeux Tapestry

D) The Hereford Mappa Mundi

Answer · why

C) The Bayeux Tapestry

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 ...

Q 04/05

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

A) Henry II

B) King John

C) Henry III

D) Henry V

Answer · why

C) Henry III

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 ...

Q 05/05

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

A) Eel Pie Island

B) Isle of Dogs

C) Chiswick Eyot

D) Thorney Island

Answer · why

D) Thorney Island

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 abb...