An afternoon in Westminster...

I went to Westminster Abbey yesterday, just to while away an hour. I wasn't impressed at the £27 admission charge but as I had walked the length of Victoria Street from the Cathedral just to wander round there, I coughed up. Of course I've been to the Abbey many times, but not for some twenty odd years as a tourist. Unlike my experience of Evensong, when the church feels almost prayerful and more spaceous, I felt oppressed by the sheer numbers of people. While looking for the tomb of Queen Elizabeth, I asked one of the stewards whether it was always this crowded on a weekday lunchtime. He looked at me aghast and told me that it was actually rather quiet for that time of day, and that should I visit the Abbey during the Summer months I would not be able to move quite so freely.

I thought I liked the Abbey but it's actually saturated with Baroque monuments which are at odds with the pointed arches. I guess being ushered into the quire at Evensong one simply doesn't look round much. David Starkey once remarked that it was the shrine in which Britain came to worship itself, and I think that's a very insightful observation. I also hadn't realised that Queen Elizabeth is actually buried with her half sister Mary; not, as I had thought, with the martyred Mary Queen of Scots. The steward rather grandly said that the two Mary's were different people and I think assumed that, like most Americans, I had thought they were the same person. Looking down in the Lady Chapel, grafted onto the apse by the usurper Henry VII, I noticed for the first time the erstwhile burial place of Oliver Cromwell, marked with a simple slab. For somebody who would have decried being buried in the east end of a church as a Popish superstition (he declined quinine to treat his malaria because it had been discovered by a Jesuit!) he had quite a decent, kingly burial!

Presently I went into the Chapter House, which is very grand indeed. There were no tourists in there at all, unlike the main body of the church. I got a profound sense of the importance of the Abbey to the mediaeval Church. It actually felt like a democratic place and I had a vision of cowled monks discussing business with the Abbot.

I didn't stay long, or take many pictures, because I felt oppressed by the tourists and it will be a long time before I go back. Have you ever been to the Abbey? Will you watch the Coronation?