Day 19 London Saturday, Sept 29, 2017
Janet poses at the Princess Diana Memorial Garden at Kensington Palace. We'd heard about this from Hilary. We visited Westminster Abbey, had an interesting lunch at the Sanctuary House pub, and then strolled around Kensington Gardens.
Without a scheduled tour time, we took it easy in the morning. We had our usual coffee using Wynn's pod machine. When we finally took off at about 10:45, it was a beautiful sunny day as you can see here down our street at Trafalgar Square.
Street artists and performers everywhere. That's the National Gallery in the background.
In front of the Gallery's columns there was some wild performance going on (see the crowds over there?). But we needed to get going to Westminster.
The Admiral Horatio Nelson Column, with the admiral's statue on the top.
You can see that in this case, they made the lion statues to face the correct direction! Huge crowds over there in Trafalgar Square.
We walked to Westminster Abbey, through St. James Park. This was a cute house and garden we passed by.
Another pretty view in St. James Park.
We finally reached the Abbey and got in a 45-minute line.
St. Margaret's Church, next to the Abbey, whose bells played a lengthy noontime concert while we stood in line. Winston Churchill was married there.
We loved our tour of the Abbey, using audio guides (no photos allowed). It has been the coronation church since 1066, and had 16 royal weddings. It's the burial place for numerous kings and queens, and other famous British scientists, musicians, writers, and politicians.
The original church was consecrated in 1065 by Edward the Confessor, who died a few days later and was buried there. Archeologists have found the remains of Edward's church below the abbey, and it was almost as large as the current one. King Henry III wanted to honor Saint Edward so in 1245 he began work on his shrine, and enlarging in general, in the Gothic style. When it was partially done, in 1272 (with the shrine to Edward that exists today), Henry died and work didn't continue until 1376. The abbey has since been added onto and refurbished many times over the centuries.
It did survive, mostly, the blitz of WWII. But not until 1960 was the interior finally cleaned up to reveal the true color of the stonework. Its main ceiling is 102 feet tall, tallest in England.
It's in the shape of a cross, and tourists enter at the top in the north transept. We started our tour down the north aisle, which is called Musicians' Aisle. I didn't know that at first, but suddenly noticed the tomb of Ralph Vaughn Williams (and got all excited), and then Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britton, Adrian Boult, and Henry Purcell (the Abbey's organist from 1679 to 1695).
Also in that area was the tomb and a statue of William Wilberforce, who championed the anti-slavery issue for 20 years, which Britain finally abolished in 1807. Not too far from us in Ohio is the town of Wilberforce, named for him, and also Wilberforce Univ, the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans.
Near the western main door was the tomb of the unknown soldier, buried in 1920, with an attractive red silk poppy border. We walked up the nave and passed the tombs and monuments to scientists Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Michael Faraday. Also, African explorer David Livingstone's tomb ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume").
The choir was impressive, as this photo shows. The Sanctuary and high alter are beyond, which is where the coronations take place. There have been 39 monarchs crowned there, starting with Henry III and Elizabeth, in 1953 the most recent. Prior to Elizabeth's, they set up temporary seats to increase capacity from 2000 to 8000. Her Coronation Chair, used in every coronation since 1297, is on display near the west door, and is considered one of the Abbey's most famous artifacts. Only Bloody Mary didn't use it because she didn't want to sit in the same chair as her protestant half-brother Edward VI!
We continued up the church, past the St. Edward the Confessor shrine/chapel. It was not open to the public, as it was too sensitive since it has been in place for about 800 years and is considered the "spiritual heart" of the Abbey. Also in that chapel were the tombs of Henrys II and III, Edwards I and III, Richard II, and their queens.
As Janet and I continued up the North Ambulatory, we gazed briefly at many of the elaborate tombs and monuments in the various chapels. There are over 600 tombs and monuments in the Abbey, and occasionally we would recognize a person. There was the Florence Nightingale Chapel, dedicated to the nurses and midwives killed during WWII.
We then visited Henry VII's Lady Chapel (see floor plan), which is considered one of the Abbey's glories. As shown in this Internet photo, Henry and his wife Elizabeth of York are buried there with fancy gold effigies done by a famous Italian sculptor. This was the royal union in 1486 that united the Tudors with the Yorks and ended the War of the Roses. Also buried in this east end of the Abbey are Queen Eliz, Bloody Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles II, William III and Queen Mary II, Queen Anne, and the two boys murdered by Richard III (Edward V and his cousin).
Back in the South Transept was Poets' Corner, where we saw monuments or graves for Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Dickens, Handel, Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, and many others.
We departed the main church to the cloisters, and they too were filled with monuments and graves. Here is a monument to Capt James Cook and his world travels circumnavigating the globe.
I just had to take this photo of Clementi's tombstone since we all played numerous piano pieces by him back when we took piano lessons. I hadn't realized that he was "the father of the pianoforte."
It was then time for lunch, and we headed off toward a subway station. On the way, we passed by a classic pub.
The Sanctuary House was a beaut. So glad we found it and happened to be ready to eat and drink.
This photo shows that they've been serving since 1845, and it's called a Fuller's Ale and Pie House. You can see this written just below the counter in the center of the photo.
You can see how pretty the scenery is in the foreground and background.
A cool story was that we were seated behind this couple, so we got to talking since he was dressed in his uniform. He had been a Naval destroyer captain! He fought in the Falklands War. He was in his full dress because they were headed to a wedding that afternoon. We enjoyed our chat, and then wanted their photo.
We tried the sampler pie/ale plate as well as one of the full meat pies. Everything was great! The only problem was, the service was so slow, and we ate so much and talked with our new friends for so long, that we spent far too much time there. We had planned to go visit Kensington Palace, Albert Hall, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. However, it was late afternoon, and we would have to choose only one thing to visit.
We walked from the subway station to the Kensington Palace grounds, and across Kensington Gardens. This photo is Queen Victoria's statue with the palace in the background. It has been major residence for the royal family since the 17th century, when King Wm III and Queen Mary II first lived there. Princess Victoria lived here too, but as soon as she became queen in 1837, she became the first monarch to move into the new Buckingham Palace. But Kensington has remained as the home of others in the royal families, and today it's where Prince William and Kate live, Prince Harry, and various cousins of the queen.
Two pictures I took of the Kensington Garden lake with its swans, as we walked across the park toward Royal Albert Hall.
Before we left the park, we unexpectedly came across The Albert Memorial, which was pretty darned impressive.
My close-up came out pretty good. Victoria had this made a decade after Albert died in 1861.
Directly across the boulevard from the statue was Royal Albert Hall, opened at about the same time as the statue was completed. Check out the engravings along the upper rim. Lots of famous artists have performed there, and of course, now they now how many holes it takes to fill it.
We took the subway back home, and later had a great pub dinner here at The Round Table, only 75 meters from our flat. Unfortunately, there was a table near us with six loud Americans, and we did NOT like that noise.
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