Westminster Abbey

On Tuesday I was taken on a walking tour, by our Shakespeare Tutor/Tour Guide/GoogleLondon Michael Winter, to Westminster Abbey. For whatever reason, this was never a sight high on my list of things to see in London. Big Ben, yes. The London Eye, yes. Hyde Park, yes. Buckingham Palace, yes. Westminster, not really. In all honesty, my main point of reference for Westminster Abbey is from the book The DaVinci Code, in which the protagonists go there to solve riddles, and though I do enjoy a good riddle, I was not terribly drawn to the place. Once we got to the Abbey though, I started to understand the hype. The architecture in London is amazing—it is totally different than I have seen in any other city, and it is generally grandiose and beautiful—and Westminster is an unbelievably beautiful sight to see surrounded essentially by offices and Tescos and Costa Coffees. We were each given a yellow button with a cross on it to gain admittance and walked into the quire. For anyone who has never been to Westminster, though it is very beautiful, there is a strange combination of architecture from many different eras, starting with the original built by William the Conqueror in 1066 (William built it to placate the Pope who had told him to go on a crusade if he re-conquered England) to repairs and additions made in the Victorian Era.
You can clearly see where different times have added to the building, but apparently each architect had enough respect for the current building and enough foresight to stay within the same aesthetics. Inside the cathedral is both lovely and unsettling; it’s a strange contrast to be walking through white stone, gilded objects and stained glass, while with every step you take you have stepped on the remains of some important figure of British history. Everyone who’s anyone is buried in Westminster. The most notable exception is Shakespeare, who has a huge monument anyway. Again, going in, I didn’t expect that seeing all these graves would affect me as much as they did, but as I was standing in the room with what there is left on this world of Queen Elizabeth I, I found myself a little emotional. More moving still, for me at least, was the Poet’s Corner, where almost every major British literary figure is buried. Basically, all of my favorite writers are represented here: T.S. Eliot is there (and he is technically American, but the British always seem to claim him…), The Brontë sisters, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen. I wrote something in my journal after this trip that seems pretty wise so I’ll write it here: about the Poet’s corner “it is interesting to think that only in death and in libraries can all these men and women exist in the same room.” I think that is the main point of Westminster Abbey—it’s like a British History class on fast forward. Not for the first time, my feeble, young American brain had a hard time wrapping itself around the idea of 1000 years of history all in the one location. 1000 years of monarchs and politicians and artists and scientists all in one place. Americans really don’t have the same sense of history, but it’s not our fault; it’s just because we don’t have Westminster Abbey four Tube stops away from our home and on our walk to work everyday.