Anglican Church
Architecture
Westminster Abbey
Westminter Abbey, photo by JMorton
Westminster Abbey, photo by JMorton
Did you know?
- 2025: To date, 40 monarchs had been crowned in the abbey since 1066. The first one would have been William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, after overpowering the English army under King Harold Godwinson. This historical skirmish became known as the Battle of Hastings. The coronation was held on Christmas Day 1066.
- The abbey is known as a Royal Peculiar, it is independent from any archbishop or bishops’ authority. It is directly under the jurisdiction of the Sovereign, who is the Defender of the Faith.
- To Date, there have been 14 Royal Weddings which included, The Queen marrying Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) in 1947. The most recent was Prince William to the then Catherine Middleton in April 2011.
- Some Famous People buried in the abbey:
- Sir Isaac Newton
- Robert and Elizabeth Browning
- Ernest Rutherford
- Joseph Addison
- Clement Attlee
- Sir Robert Moray
- Charles Dickens
- George Frederic Handel
- David Livingstone
- William James
- Thomas Telford, the founder and first president of Institute of Civil Engineers.
- Laurence Olivier
- Stephen Hawking
- A commemorative marker with the Dirac Equation was finally allowed in the Abbey after a five-year persuasion to the Dean that Paul Dirac was not an anti-Christ.🤣
