In last month’s column, I examined a series of sites associated with William the Conqueror and the legacy of the Norman Conquest. One of these was Westminster Abbey, which I will now cover in more detail, alongside two other major church buildings that regularly feature in Current Archaeology: St Paul’s Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral. These ecclesiastical settings comprise the starting point of a new mini-series in this column on the great Christian sites of Britain. Rich in archaeological and documentary evidence, all of them are living locations that have been used by generations of people down the ages to the modern day.
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey’s origins are unclear: religious occupation of the site dates back to at least the mid-10th century, when a Benedictine monastery was founded there, while the first iteration of what was to become the abbey was built during the 1040s, commissioned by King Edward the Confessor. Construction of the present church, meanwhile, began in 1245 on the orders of Henry III. Current Archaeology has examined aspects of all these elements of its history, commencing in CA 162 (April 1999), which provides a useful assessment of the wider geoarchaeology of Thorney Island on which both the Abbey and the nearby Parliamentary Estate sit. CA 201 (January 2006) next flagged finds from that location in an article published when the Museum of London’s medieval galleries were refurbished. With the (since renamed) London Museum’s new home in Smithfield nearing completion, I hope that such discoveries will soon be back on public display. The Abbey itself was then visited in CA 220 (July 2008) during conservation works to its rare pavement of late 13th-century ‘Cosmati’ mosaics – located in the sanctuary in front of the high altar, they are the only ones of their type to survive outside Italy; CA 359 (February 2020) then revisited the mosaics as part of commemorations of their 750th anniversary of completion in 1268, revealing their extraordinary craftsmanship. More conservation works were explored in CA 244 (July 2010) during the restoration of the Abbey’s chapter house: a part of the building that was begun in the 1250s under the orders of Henry III, but which was nearly lost during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, and has since been regularly tweaked and changed over the centuries, including a major restoration in the 1860s.
Aligned with the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in April 2011, CA returned to the Abbey in issue 254 (May 2011) to consider both its place in royal history (it has hosted no fewer than 14 royal weddings to date, more than any other religious location in the realm) and its origins, as evidenced by its early medieval remains, including burials hidden beneath the Northern Green that were examined by Time Team. A burial effigy of a much later and very different status, meanwhile, was examined in CA 268 (July 2012). It was associated with the mysterious Henry Stuart, James I’s eldest son who, had, he not died in 1612, would (we presume) have succeeded his father as Henry IX, rather than his brother, the ill-fated Charles I, doing so. (How different our history, including monarchical titles, might have been but for this ill fortune.) Another aspect of royal history featured in CA 283 (October 2013): the medieval (and later) Coronation Chair, in a piece of research – prompted by the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II – that showed the complex story of just one small piece of the Abbey. For more on this and other finds, do visit the Abbey’s museum, which was refurbished in suitably grand style in the 2010s and reopened in 2018 in the eastern Triforium (the gallery above the nave), as discussed in CA 345 (December 2018).
