Westminster Abbey: Edward The Confessor's Chapel

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Arthur H. Beavan's survey of Westminster Abbey in Imperial London, 1901 continued with a look at the chapel devoted to Edward the Confessor:

Continuing the tour of Westminster Abbey - after visiting the Chapter House, en route to Edward The Confessor's Chapel...a momentary pause in Poets' Corner, a sacred spot wherein to linger on some future occasion, and our attention was drawn to a clock with remarkably sweet chimes beneath the noble rose window of the south transept, also to the companion window opposite in the north transept, ninety feet in circumference, modern and impressive enough, but hardly up to the standard of the glorious stained glass at St. Denis, Paris, or, looking nearer home, of the Seven Sisters at York, or the magnificent east window in Gloucester Cathedral.

A stroll in the Wesminster Abbey transepts followed; a glance at the lantern soaring upwards at the junction of the four lofty roofs of nave, transepts, and choir; and a reverential inspection across the brazen altar-rails, of the Sanctuary with its reredos of Staffordshire alabaster and Cornish spar, its cedar-wood super-altar holding a noble alms-dish and two stately candlesticks; and the black and green marble altar-table below supported by an elaborate cedar frame.

These, together with the bright mosaic picture of the Last Supper, the beautiful ancient mosaic pavement, the striking picture of Richard II, and the old tapestry hanging behind it on the south side of the Sanctuary, produce a harmony of colour in sharp contrast with the dull tones of the old stone-work around.

Ascending a few wooden steps into Edward the Confessor's Chapel behind the reredos, we, being on the Mound, could realize how conspicuous from every part of the church, the High Altar and the Shrine must have been in the olden times.

This small area is truly a right regal one.

The two coronation chairs face the tomb of Edward the Confessor, and, encircling it as silent guardians, are many kings (commencing with Henry III) and queens, and their near relations.

All this evoked the spirit of history and inevitable learned disquisitions, but we were not permitted to linger, and had to descend close to Edward I's plain altar tomb of grey marble, and after going the rounds of the other chantries, and making a careful survey of Henry VII's chapel, where, in one of the miniature chapels at the extreme east end, lies Dean Stanley who loved and tended the Abbey so well, we got back to the north transept door, and found that we had traversed the building.

From first to last we had been in an atmosphere of tombs and monuments, many of them cumbersome and grotesque, a large proportion utterly inappropriate, but the residue dignified and often masterpieces of art.

The interior of the Abbey has irreverently been compared to a monumental-stonemason's yard, and to a certain extent, like St. Paul's Cathedral, it deserves the appellation; but the monuments at Westminster can be made an intellectual study, as we found.

For we learnt much respecting the monumental art, e.g. how its development can be traced with accuracy from the severe simplicity of the early tomb, such as Chaucer's, up to the magnificence of the canopied monuments of the Elizabethan period, relapsing into the absurdities of the Georgian era, representing skulls, cross-bones, and other emblems of mortality; thence to a renaissance in our day of the dignified recumbent style, well exemplified in Dean Stanley's tomb.

Such masters of their art as Roubiliac, Westmacott, Nollekens, Chantrey, Rysbrack, Theed, Marochetti, Woolner, Boehm, etc., left their mark in marble all over Westminster Abbey.

Next: Westminster Abbey: Wax effigies of Royalty