Ok, not just any churches but an Abbey and a Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Cathedral to be precise.
Westminster Cathedral
The idea of visiting Westminster Cathedral was that it has a bell tower from which you can, apparently, see great views over the centre of London. I say apparently, as when we arrived we found that the tower is, in fact, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. I couldn’t understand how I had missed that important fact when I had spent ages looking at their website for details. When I got home, I went back to check how I had missed it.
The issue was that I had only looked at the “About your Visit” page and the dedicated page about the tower and neither mentioned what I consider to be the important information that it is only open Wed – Sun. A further search found a notice of opening hours and days on the tours page, but I hadn’t looked there. Why would I? I wasn’t taking a tour. I was a bit miffed, so maybe I’ll write a letter of complaint to the Pope.
The Cathedral, being a Catholic church, was brightly coloured, gaudy even, up until the first floor and above that the ceiling was pitch black – it was like staring into the abyss!
Westminster Abbey
I am going to say right now that I was hugely disappointed with the Abbey and tour. We’d paid £51 per person to be guided around (£31 for Abbey entrance and £20 for the guide) but it really wasn’t worth that money. The main problem was that there were simply too many people allowed into the Abbey. This meant that it was difficult to move around without tripping over people, and it was almost impossible to hear the guide. It felt like a complete money grab with no thought for the people visiting.
That said we did learn some interesting things, well I did at any rate. For example, I hadn’t realised that the Chapter House was where the monks would be read a chapter of the bible a day. In the case of the Abbey Chapter House this was also where the first English parliament was held. We also learned that the phrase “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” comes from how money allocated for building the Abbey, or extending it at least, was appropriated for the building of St Paul’s Cathedral.
There are many well known people commemorated in Westminster Abbey, some of them are even buried there too – Winston Churchill, for example, has a very prominent stone near one of the entrances but is actually buried in Blenheim. Charles Darwin is buried here but, as an atheist, will be turning in his grave. And, the last person to ever be inturned there is Stephen Hawking. It is now full up.
If you are interested in seeing the coffins and shrines to many famous people and plenty of Kings and Queens than you are in the right place but just don’t expect to see much other the the many, many tourists allowed through the fine doors.
