Westminster Abbey, Westminster, Greater London
There has been a building on this site since Roman times. Legend says there was a Christian church in 184AD. St Dunstan founded a Benedictine Abbey here in 959. Edward the Confessor rebuilt the abbey on a grand scale in 1065 and made it the royal church of England. That church was pulled down and Henry III started to rebuild it in 1245. The Abbey was dissolved in January 1540 when it was the richest monastery in England. Henry VIII converted the abbey into one of the new cathedrals of Reformation England. In 1556 Elizabeth I made it into the Collegiate church of St Peter which it still is.
Location
Greater London WestminsterPeriod
Medieval (Middle Ages) (1066 - 1484)Themes
