Abbey

Last week to Westminster Abbey, in part to show BH the new gallery in the triforium, discovered last year. A cold frosty morning and we started the proceedings by discovering that the cash machines at Epsom Station have started charging for cash withdrawals. Perhaps the declining use of cash is denting the business model which pays for what must be expensive bits of machinery. Then caught the first train permitted with our senior tickets the 0934.

Eurostar terminal recycled

Very taken with the recycled Eurostar terminal, now open for suburban business. But taken aback when the young lady on the information desk explained that it had been open for about a year. How could we not have noticed?

Dead walkway

Waiting for the 211 bus in York Road we observed that the fine walkway which a long time ago used to lead from Waterloo Station to the embankment, possibly originally paid for by BP when they put up their big tower there - the one with fancy floors near the top for the top executives and with viewing platform above - was finally being demolished. I remember it fondly from the days when I used to use it on my walk from Waterloo to Westminster, via County Hall and Westminster Bridge. Middle right in the snap above.

Building wrapping art

The 211 dropped us somewhere close to Westminster Abbey, but we actually kicked off in the café underneath Central Hall, as noticed in a previous post in this series. A place we find convenient as pit stops in this part of Westminster are oddly thin on the ground, despite the number of people swilling (or perhaps swirling) around. Onto the abbey for the 1130 start of our timed tickets. Queues practically non-existent. The chap on the security tent (possibly a Sikh rather than C-of-E) explained that Christmas apart, the abbey was pretty quiet in the winter with trade only really picking up at Easter. But the arrangements at the door remain quaintly old-fashioned and inefficient, as befits an ancient institution, if not a premier league visitor attraction.

Taking in on the way the fine example of the building wrapper's art at St. Margaret's. Perhaps it will not look so good after it has weathered the various beasts from the east that are being advertised in the recesses of freeview.

Opening impression of the abbey itself remains that of a junk yard full of funerary monuments, stacked up all over the place, any old how. I was reminded that a friend from northern Europe, bred in a more austere tradition, thought the place awful.

Hockney and his glass

Worked our way down the aisle to the west door, to look up the nave, with the view rather spoiled by the 10 foot high, glass light fittings hanging from the ceiling. We remained unimpressed by the stained glass, mostly Victorian but including a modern piece by the north door, the work of Hockney. We rated this a near miss. A lot better than some of the modern stained glass that one sees around, but not in the same league as masters like Pugin. See references 3 and 4.

Lots of very fancy monuments from the 17th and 18th centuries on the way, although not as big as those that followed in the 19th centuries. Some of them seemed a touch irreverent, with one including a sentiment to the effect that life is one big joke, so you had better make the most of it while you can.

A bit of a monument; a fine bit of faking

Black Rod

A fancy but not intrusive monument to a gentleman who rose to serve as Black Rod, some centuries before they allowed ladies into the role. No idea what the duties of a 'gentleman usher daily waiter' might have been, although reference 5 suggests that the 'daily' bit might of meant that daily attendance was required.

More book

Another bit of show off carving and we noticed that the same maker was responsible for a number of other monuments in the vicinity. Perhaps he had been the man of the moment.

Uncle Ben

Not sure what this one was about. Surely he would have rated a proper monument somewhere?

Tumbling towers

Looking back up the nave we found that Isaac Newton had collared a very good position for his monument, on the left hand side of the nave side of the screen between nave and quire. I had not heard of the chap who collared the right hand side.

Into the crossing where we discovered that the four principal pillars were slightly curved, outwards I think, rather than a true vertical. Was this deliberate?

Round the various chapels on the north side of the ambulatory around the shrine. One of which had very serious looking spikes on its fencing iron railings. Puzzled by that containing the monument to Elizabeth I as we had thought to find that to Mary I as well. Some talk of it being underneath which seemed a bit off. A bit later we learned that the Hanoverians had their own vault under the Lady Chapel, so something else to check is where Henry VIII was and where the Stuarts were. What about modern monarchs? But we did find Henry V in a good position at the eastern end of the shrine, the culmination of a very elaborate funeral indeed, the story of which reminded me of that of Alexander the Great, which I had read about in Mary Renault's book, noticed at reference 7. Was that their model?

And so into the Lady Chapel itself, the rather elaborate home to the monument to Henry VII and his lady, also the home of the Order of Bath, where we found a couple of people from the University of Liverpool who were doing a laser scan of the roof; a small flickering contraption on top of a tripod. They explained that they could do a reasonable job of reconstructing the ceiling from a few such scans, from different positions, enough to make sure that everything got seen, that everything was in a line of sight at least once. You then got a big computer to correlate all the scans. Sometimes, if you were allowed in the roof space, you could correlate scans looking down with scans looking up. See reference 6.

I suppose what you are buying is a permanent digital record of the geometry of the roof without having to go to the bother of drawing it by hand. While what you might be losing is the knowledge of and empathy with the structure you might get by going to that bother. And what I could have done was ask the Liverpool people about the curving pillars. In all probability they would have known or known someone who did know.

Next stop, the new gallery in the triforium, my second visit, BH's first. Interested again by all the hidden carvings that you get to see on the way up, carvings which are not normally seen at all, not being visible from the ground. To the greater glory of God alone!

Various charters, one which sported the properly magical number of seven seals. We noticed that many of the seals were indeed attached to their documents, but were themselves encased in little bags or pouches. Presumably the wax of which the seals were made was apt to rub.

Slightly perturbed by the wooden funeral effigies of various monarchs, some of which looked disconcertingly naked. I think here in particular of one of Mary I. It is all very well for your effigy to appear in full state dress at your funeral, quite another to have the naked wooden body laid out for display afterwards. A sense that we were seeing things behind the scenes which were not meant to be seen; we were supposed to be in the stalls, not creeping around the back. That was for the untouchables, so as to speak. Something of the same sort perhaps which deters me from looking at all the behind-the-scenes extras which come with some deluxe DVD's: I want to enjoy the magic, not to study the tricks of the trade.

Contrariwise, medieval abbots of places like Ely were all for having very skeletal looking effigies on the tops of their tombs. A reminder not to get too keen on earthly glory when we are all going to end as dust. So perhaps these effigies are making, in their own way, the same point.

Some neat perspective models of the abbey made from paper and which could be concertina'd flat. Some impressive wooden models of parts of the cathedral, made at a time when the master carpenter was a woman, which I would not have thought was allowed, had I been asked. Even though she was the widow of her predecessor.

Having made an early start we proceeded to the cafeteria in the cloisters, now called the Cellarium Café and Terrace. A place which did tea and cakes, formal teas and lunches, without regard to time of day. But, as it turned out, we had a very decent lunch. Helped along by their serving wine in 350ml carafes, which is sometimes quite enough. I was fairly veggie, with a substantial cream of vegetable soup, some factory brown bread (but with plentiful loose butter), some pasta in a cream sauce involving mushrooms and a slice of apple cake, possibly mainly polenta. BH replaced the pasta with sea bream.

Out to the bus stops outside Portcullis House, where we had a cold wait for our 211 bus, there being cold wind blowing down from Parliament Square. We learned all about Upper Taxi Road, the entirely sensible name of the road right outside the concourse area, running down to York Road.

Home by about 1700, so quite a long day for us, complete with a full complement of newspapers. But read instead all about the dissolution of the monasteries, as it affected the abbey, in the higher grade picture book noticed at reference 8. It occurred to me that the dissolution was an early form of privatisation, with the monarch divvying up what amounted to public property among himself and his cronies. A bit like flogging off the mental hospitals to speculative builders and then dumping the former inhabitants on the vagaries of care in the community.

Wound up the proceedings with a fine example of what we call e-number soup. Take various left over vegetables - in this case boiled rice, mashed potatoes and boiled crinkly cabbage - and warm them all up in a couple of pints of water flavoured with a packet of Knorr chicken noodle soup. Maybe some celery and onion got into the mix too. All the vegetables nicely tone down the all e-numbers from the packet, resulting in a very palatable brew.

PS: I got pulled up at one point for taking an unobtrusive picture (without flash), this despite the place swarming with tourists peering into their telephone-like devices offering pictures and words about what they might otherwise be looking at. There were iconic signs about no photography in front of various important exhibits, for example the altars, but I remain unclear about whether there is a blanket ban on visitor photography.

PPS: I now know from the people at Liverpool that the bending of the pillars is down to settlement. A reasonably common phenomenon which sometimes resulted in collapse.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/abbey-two.html. The second of the two visits last year.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=westminster+abbey. Westminster posts more generally.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/05/ramsgate-4.html.

Reference 4: https://www.augustine-pugin.org.uk/.

Reference 5: https://www.history.ac.uk/publications/office/vic.

Reference 6: http://www.tracingthepast.org.uk/.

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/bread-bags.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/better-late-than-never.html.

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