medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 02/06/2011 22:42, Rosemary Hayes-Milligan and Andrew Milligan wrote:
>
> As we were in London and inspired (perhaps as many were) by the Royal Wedding, we visited Westminster Abbey for the first time in many years. It was full of tourists and costs £30+ for a family ticket but is well worth it for visitors to London. Strangely, its roots as an abbey are a bit hard to cling on to. It is full of memorials, mostly post-Tudor and it was quite hard to find the few abbots. Despite all Barbara Harvey's great work, I did not see much that pointed out the history of the abbey qua abbey - the royal connections were much more stressed. Nevertheless, the pavement was beautiful, Henry VII's lady chapel stupendous, the chapter house notable for medieval tiles and wall paintings and the audio guide a great aid to a first visit. One would have to return again and again to get to grips with its riches.
Well, the cloister and chapter house are a bit of a clue - but more to
the point is the survival of the claustral buildings - especially the
undercroft of the dormitory and the infirmary cloister, and the bits of
the abbot's lodging around the west end of the church (behind the
bookshop.). Not to mention the way the night stair passage goes over the
vestibule of the chapter house and at high level through St Faith's
chapel (itself probably a sacristy.) You can probably tell from first
principles that it was a Benedictine house - it is fairly obviously not
Cistercian, for example.
John Briggs
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