Westminster Abbey at night

Westminster Abbey is a Royal Peculiar under the personal jurisdiction of the Sovereign.

Westminster Abbey is entwined with English and then British history. The Abbey's origins go back to the 970s when St. Dunstan assisted by King Edgar established Benedictine monks here.

From 1042, King Edward the Confessor began to rebuild the Abbey in the Norman Romanesque style from over the Channel.

In 1245 Henry III began to build the present church in Anglo-French Gothic style to venerate the shrine of Edward the Confessor. The structure was finished under Richard II, but Henry VII added a Lady Chapel at the East End.

Briefly a Cathedral under Henry VIII so as to spare it the dissolution of other Abbeys, it was restored to the Benedictines under Mary I, who were ejected under Elizabeth I in 1559. It was Elizabeth who made the Abbey a Royal Peculiar. Westminster even weatered the storm during the Commonwealth given its close ties to the State, and Cromwell was buried there in 1658, but disinterred under the Restoration.

The two western towers seen here were built by Nicolas Hawksmoor between 1722 and 1745 from Portland stone in Gothic revival style.

In 1997 the funeral of Diana Princess of Wales was held here.