On Thorney Island beside the Thames stands the church where English monarchs have been crowned since 1066. Westminster Abbey is a Royal Peculiar, a house of prayer answerable directly to the Crown, and a chronicle of a thousand years written in stone.
A Benedictine community was established here by about 960, in the age of St Dunstan and King Edgar. It was Edward the Confessor who raised the abbey to greatness, rebuilding it on a royal scale; his new church was consecrated on 28 December 1065, only days before his death.
The Gothic church seen today was begun in 1245 under Henry III, who rebuilt the Confessor's abbey as a shrine fit for a saint-king and a setting for coronations. Successive centuries completed the soaring nave, and the western towers were finished to Nicholas Hawksmoor's design in 1745.
Since the coronation of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day 1066, almost every English and British sovereign has been crowned before its high altar. Kings, queens, poets and statesmen lie beneath its pavement, making the abbey both a working church and the memory of a nation.