A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to London; Its Public Buildings, Leading Thoroughfares, and Principal Objects of Interest . and Other Recent Additions

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 ...nearly eight hundred years after the Confessor was laid in his tomb. It was natural, too, that monarchs should wish to "sleep their last sleep" in the spot where they were crowned; and many of our kings and queens lie in the abbey It has been called England's Pantheon, because, in addition, room has been found for her leading statesmen and warriors, her poets, artists, and men (1t letters--in fact, all that the nation holds dear--as well. At the WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 169 time of the erection of the Confessor's Abbey, the site had ceased to be an island. The branch of the Thames, which cut it off from the rest of Middlesex, had been filled up, and the main river had been embanked and deepened, so that much of the land on which the houses now stand had been rescued from the water. Many buildings, too, had sprung up around the abbey, which was called the west minster, to distinguish it from the east minster (St. Paul's Cathedral), on the summit of a hill, a mile off. Only a few fragments of Edward's church--perhaps, the first in England in which the Norman style was adopted--remain in some parts of the cloisters. Henry III. pulled it down, in the thirteenth century, in order to erect the present splendid edifice on its site; and he himself built the eastern portion of the nave and aisle. Like all our large churches, the abbey was the growth of centuries. The western portions were added at various periods between 1340 and 1483. The north and west cloisters were built by Abbot Litlington, in the reign of Edward III.; in them are the tombs of some of the early abbots, half-obliterated effigies of whom may be traced on the pavement. The Jerusalem Chamber, at the south-western angle of the abbey--the place where Henry IV. died suddenly, so partially fulfilli...