How long did it take to build Westminster Abbey? How long did Westminster Cathedral take to build?

How long did it take to build Westminster Abbey?

St. Edward the Confessor built a new church on the site, which was consecrated on December 28, 1065. It was of considerable size and cruciform in plan. In 1245 Henry III pulled down the whole of Edward’s church (except the nave) and replaced it with the present abbey church in the pointed Gothic style of the period.

The design and plan were strongly influenced by contemporary French cathedral architecture. The rebuilding of the Norman-style nave was begun by the late 1300s under the architect Henry Yevele and continued intermittently until Tudor times. The Early English Gothic design of Henry III’s time predominates, however, giving the whole church the appearance of having been built at one time.

 

The chapel of Henry VII (begun c. 1503), in Perpendicular Gothic style, replaced an earlier chapel and is famed for its exquisite fan vaulting. Above the original carved stalls hang the banners of the medieval Order of the Bath.

The western towers were the last addition to the building. They are sometimes said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but they were actually built by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James and completed about 1745.

The choir stalls in the body of the church date from 1847, and the high altar and reredos were remodeled by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1867. Scott and J.L. Pearson also restored the north transept facade in the 1880s. The abbey was heavily damaged in the bombings that ravaged London in World War II, but it was restored soon after the war.

How long did Westminster Cathedral take to build?

• Begun: Jun 1895
• Completed: 1903

The seat of the Archbishop of Westminster was designed in an early Christian Byzantine style inspired by St Mark’s in Venice and the Santa Sophia in Constantinople.

The basic structure took eight years to complete and used 12.5 million hand-made bricks to construct. External brick and stone banding adds to the Cathedral’s distinctive look.

The campanile, St. Edward’s Tower, stands 84 metres high and is asymmetrically placed over the first bay of the outer northern aisle.

Eight marble columns support a huge canopy over the high altar, while Byzantine mosaics cover the chapels and the vaulting of the sanctuary. The friezes of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, by the sculptor Eric Gill, are world-renowned.