Top 10 facts about Westminster Abbey

WESTMINSTER Abbey was consecrated 950 years ago today on December 28, 1065.

 

The abbey was originally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster

 

1. Westminster Abbey is built close to where a vision of St Peter is said to have been seen on the Thames by a salmon fisherman named Edric.

2. The Fishermen’s Company offers a salmon to Westminster Abbey each year in memory of this.

3. The abbey was originally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster.

 

Edward The Confessor rebuilt it starting around 1042 as a burial place for English kings

 

The abbey was originally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster

 

4. It is not an abbey. Officially it is a Royal Peculiar, a church responsible directly to the sovereign.

5. Edward The Confessor rebuilt it starting around 1042 as a burial place for English kings.

6. Coronations have been held at the abbey since those of Harold Godwinson in January 1066 and William The Conqueror in December 1066.

7. At least 16 royal weddings have been held there, though the only reigning monarchs to be married there were Henry I and Richard II.

 

Coronations have been held at the abbey since those of Harold Godwinson in January 1066

 

At least 16 royal weddings have been held there

 

8. Oliver Cromwell was given a funeral there in 1658 but was dug up in January 1661 and posthumously hanged from a gibbet at Tyburn.

9. The poet Ben Jonson (1573-1637) is the only person buried in a standing position in the abbey.

10. The tomb of the Unknown Warrior in the far western end of the nave is the 1only tomb in the abbey on which it is forbidden to walk.