St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Although Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral have long been centers of communion for the people of London, and both houses of worship have been focal points during several periods of English history, they have experienced significantly different lives since their completions. The architecture of each building provides the most obvious evidence of their differences. Where St. Paul’s was burned in the Great Fire of !666 to be built anew between 1675 and 1711, Westminster Abbey is somewhat of a conglomerate of different styles and purposes beginning with Edward the Confessor’s monastery of 1065, remnants of which are found in the cloisters, such as the Pyx Chamber. In contrast, St. Paul’s was the first cathedral to be built after the English Reformation, when Henry VIII removed the Church of England from the jurisdiction of the Pope and made himself Supreme Head of the English Church (St. Paul’s Cathedral). The Abbey, therefore, keeps a much longer physical record of the reigns of different monarchs and the sentiments of the English people.

St. Paul's Cathedral

That is not to say, however, that St. Paul’s doesn’t have it’s own interesting history. The first St. Paul’s was built in 604 and the wooden building burned down in 675. It was rebuilt ten years later and destroyed again, this time by Vikings, in 962 and a new church was built with stone. In 1087, after another fire, the Normans who had conquered Britain built the church again; they finished the church in 1240 and continued adding to it all the way up to 1300. For the years leading up to the Great Fire that destroyed the old St. Paul’s, the cathedral fell into disrepair, “during the Civil War and the subsequent Republic, which followed the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the country became less respectful towards the established church.” (St. Paul’s Cathedral) The church was used for stabling horses at one point and the nave became a marketplace with a road running through the transepts for a time. After the Great Fire, the new church was rebuilt and has maintained a tradition of public service since, “for over 300 years, St. Paul’s has been a place where the individual and nation can express those feelings of joy, gratitude, and sorrow that are so central to our lives.” (St. Paul’s Cathedral) For example, in the 18^th century, a service was held to celebrate George III’s return to good health after a struggle with mental illness and following the terror attacks on New York on September 11, 2001, crowds gathered to express solidarity and grief. St. Paul’s, then, can be seen as the people’s church, as it seeks to be a house of prayer for people of all faiths.

Westminster, too, has been shaped and repurposed to maintain a reverential role in a modern age, and has come to reflect the history of the people of England.  The Abbey is home to over six hundred monuments and wall tablets and is the final resting place of more than three thousand people (Westminster Abbey). Where St. Paul’s and the Abbey differ in their memorials is also reflective of the individual churches’ history and function. As for the Abbey, anyone who has significantly influenced England’s history has the honor of being buried there; so, there are monuments for poets, writers, scientists, war heroes, and royalty. On the other hand, St. Paul’s became a focal point of World War II, and suffered damage due to bombing by the Luftwaffe. This piece of St. Paul’s history is captured in the fact that many of those buried there are war heroes. Poppies, which have become a symbol of the Second World War in Britain, lay on several tombs and wreaths of them adorn many of the war memorials in the Crypt. Regardless of the differences, each of the churches honor the history of England, and by comparing the two, one can get a better sense of the role of the two houses of worship in the lives of the people.