A tour of Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church focussing on the many connections with the United States of America from Sir Walter Raleigh who was buried in the second decade of the 16th century to Martin Luther King Jnr. whose statue stands above the Great West Door. Others include Admiral Edward Vernon who gave his name to Washington’s estate on the Potomac, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, father of the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution, George Peabody from Massachusetts, whose business was the foundation of the JP Morgan empire and the extraordinary Winter Olympics Gold medallist, Billy Fiske III, the only American pilot memorialised in the Battle of Britain Roll of Honour.
Of the 3000+ people buried and/or memorialised in Westminster Abbey, over 230 are former pupils of Westminster School, the successor to the monastery school, which was seamlessly reconstituted by a foundation of King Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monastery in 1540 and then re-founded in 1560 by his daughter Queen Elizabeth I as part of her foundation of the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster (also known as “Westminster Abbey”). The purpose of this booklet is a very narrow one, namely to identify from the available records the whereabouts of as many as possibly of those former pupils’ marked graves and memorials. The reader is taken on a tour of those sites starting in St Margaret’s churchyard, moving into St Margaret’s itself and then across to the Abbey, following the current visitor tour route from the North Transept, up the North Choir Aisle into the Nave, back down the South Choir Aisle into the Crossing and around the Ambulatory chapels (including Henry VII’s Chapel), into the South Transept and exiting into the Cloisters via the East Cloister door and finishing up in the Chapter House.
Westminster Abbey is primarily a working church and is set up as such; not as a museum. Yet the majority of visitors are not worshippers. They are there to wonder at the magnifi cence of the building and its history as told by the artefacts on display (e.g. the Coronation Chair) and the plethora of monuments and graves of those memorialised and/or buried there. Unlike a museum, few points of interest are identifi ed by way of labels and, necessarily, only a very small minority of them can be included in a conveniently sized guidebook. There are over 3,000 people known to have been buried in the Abbey. There are stories behind many of them. This little book concentrates on some of those in the Nave and stories unlikely to be found in the usual guidebooks.
This booklet catalogues in alphabetical order the architects buried and/or memorialised in the Abbey. Their names are accompanied by brief biographies identifying the high spots of their architectural careers. The Appendix is a plan of the Abbey marked up to show where their graves and/or memorials are to be found. Also included are Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, neither of whom is buried or memorialised in the Abbey. They are deemed to qualify for entry solely because their contributions to the structure of the building are too significant to ignore and may be deemed to constitute their memorials. On the same basis, several of the medieval master masons responsible for the building and extension of Henry III’s church rate a brief mention at the end.
The Chapel of St Nicholas is the chapel at the east end of the South Ambulatory of the Abbey. It does not feature on the Abbey’s audio guide, but is of interest for several of the individuals buried here. The only family entitled as of right to be buried in the Abbey is the family of the Duke of Northumberland. The entrance to the Northumberland vault is situated in this chapel. The vault holds 30 members of the family including the father of the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution and the most recent arrival, the widow of the 10th Duke of Northumberland, who died in 2012. Other families well represented here are the Seymours and the Cecils. The first ‘resident’ to arrive was Philippa de Mohun, Duchess of York, who died in 1431.
This is an up-to-date reference source on bowels, providing case histories, key points, questions, answers and practical tips for overcoming problems. It includes the latest advances in diagnosis and treatment as well as practical self-help advice and preventive measures. The book is one of a series on a wide range of medical and health issues which covers common complaints and illnesses, such as asthma and heart disease as well as more general health topics, such as nutrition and travel health. Addresses of useful organisations appear at the end of each book.
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