Westminster Abbey [antikvár]

Westminster Abbeyby The Reverend Neil Collings,Chaplain of Westminster AbbeyWhat to look for: A very warm welcome to Westminster Abbey! There is so much to look for because over 900 years of living history are squeezed inside these walls. We are going to. stop at a few places of importance and of special interest to you so please try and follow the route shown on your map and always remember that you are in a House of God where services have been said and sung every day since 1065. The Abbey may well remind you of one of the museums you have visited in London because of all its memorials, statues and graves; so try and look up as often as you can towards the glorious roof This is not only the highest church built in England during the Middle Ages (it is over 101 feet to the roof) but it is also 'an act of worship in stone', reminding us that our first duty is to love and worship God and second to love our neighbour.Did you know? 1066 is the one date we can all remember! It was in the year before that King Edward the Confessor finished his new Abbey for the monks of Westminster who lived here on what was then an island in the Thames, the Isle of Thorns. At the beginning of 1066 King Edward died and was buried in his Abbey and later when William the Conqueror arrived to take the English throne he wanted to be crowned near King Edward's remains, on Christmas Day of that famous year. In all thirty-eight English coronations have taken place here. About a hundred years later the Pope made King Edward a saint and in 1245 King Henry III, wishing the saint's body to rest in a more magnificent church, knocked down the old Abbey and began the church you see around you today. It took over 200 years for it all to be finished and the famous towers above the door you enter were not built until the mid-eighteenth century. King Henry VIII closed the monastery in 1540 and it was his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, who made the Abbey what it is still today - a royal church responsible only to the king or queen.