I visited Westminster Abbey after a walk past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. I was worried that the amount of tourists inside would interfere with my enjoyment of the audio tour made available to me. However, even with crammed conditions, the audio tour was enjoyable. I would have loved to take photos of the inside of the abbey, but I was not allowed to, although I did get a few in the College Garden section, and the Cloisters.
I had heard of Poets' Corner, but did not realize how many people were included in it. Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, and Charles Dickens are all buried there. Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Henry James, and Lewis Carroll all have memorials there. I sat in the Poets' Corner section to take it all in, just as they announced the moment of prayer on the hour. The amount of history in this grandiose abbey was breath-taking.
The abbey also contains the graves of Elizabeth I and Mary I, Mary: Queen of Scots, Henry III, Edward I, Eleanor of Castile, Edward III, Richard II and Queen Anne of Bohemia, Henry IV, Margaret (daughter of Edward IV), Elizabeth (daughter of of Henry VII), James I, Charles II, Edward V, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and Edward VI.
The Coronation Chair that has been used for royalty since 1066 is also housed there. The abbey was originally founded in 960 AD by Benedictine monks, which makes it over 1,000 years old. I was very pleased with my visit to the abbey, and particularly in the fact that not everything was roped off, allowing me to interact more with such an important piece of history.
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/
I had heard of Poets' Corner, but did not realize how many people were included in it. Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, and Charles Dickens are all buried there. Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Henry James, and Lewis Carroll all have memorials there. I sat in the Poets' Corner section to take it all in, just as they announced the moment of prayer on the hour. The amount of history in this grandiose abbey was breath-taking.
The abbey also contains the graves of Elizabeth I and Mary I, Mary: Queen of Scots, Henry III, Edward I, Eleanor of Castile, Edward III, Richard II and Queen Anne of Bohemia, Henry IV, Margaret (daughter of Edward IV), Elizabeth (daughter of of Henry VII), James I, Charles II, Edward V, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and Edward VI.
The Coronation Chair that has been used for royalty since 1066 is also housed there. The abbey was originally founded in 960 AD by Benedictine monks, which makes it over 1,000 years old. I was very pleased with my visit to the abbey, and particularly in the fact that not everything was roped off, allowing me to interact more with such an important piece of history.
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/
I also visited the Tate Britain Art Museum that day and got the chance to see several of Monet's paintings, as well as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's, John Everett Millais', John William Waterhouse's, and William Blake's artwork. I also purchased a small book on Lewis Carroll in the Museum gift store.
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