London: Banqueting House, Westminster Abbey & Temple Church

Banqueting House is the last remaining portion of Whitehall Palace. King Charles I stepped from one of the windows to a scaffold to be beheaded in 1649. His son, Charles II returned from exile and took up residence in 1660. Westminster Abbey is over 1,000 years old – the scene of every coronation since William the Conqueror, and the last resting place of over 3,300 people, including 17 monarchs. Temple Church was built by the Knights Templar in 1185 and is the burial place of several knights, including three of my ancestors.

Originally I was to go on a day tour to Stonehenge and Salisbury on this particular Thursday and just hang out in London to visit these locations the following day. But I received an email from the tour company the day before saying that the Stonehenge & Salisbury tour had been canceled. Did I want to go to Stonehenge, Avebury and Glastonbury on the Friday? I just switched plans for the two days (fortunately I didn’t have another tour booked for Friday and hadn’t booked ahead for the Abbey).

After breakfast, I sauntered down the Strand to Whitehall and Banqueting House. I was slightly ahead of schedule and so had to wait just outside the door until they opened. Designed by Inigo Jones and completed in 1622 at the behest of King James I/VI as an addition to Whitehall Palace, Banqueting House was part of another palace that Henry VIII took from Cardinal Wolsey (called York Place) and greatly enlarged.

The rest of Whitehall Palace burned down in 1698, by which time the king was the widowed William III, whose heart just wasn’t in having it rebuilt. His wife, Mary II, had been the granddaughter of Charles I (and daughter of James II/VII). Had she still been alive, it would have been rebuilt.

The ceiling of Banqueting House was commissioned by Charles I and painted by Peter Paul Rubens. The paintings were done in Rubens’ studio and installed in the specially designed frames on the ceiling in 1636.

Charles I was disappointed when Rubens went back to Antwerp when he was done and left Anthony van Dyck behind in his place to be the court painter. He wasn’t disappointed for long as van Dyck quickly proved his own talents. The artist was knighted by Charles and preceded him in death by eight years. He was buried at Westminster Abbey.

The glorious ceiling paintings, pretty much deifying his father, most likely would have been the last things Charles would have seen before stepping out of the window from that room to the scaffold. Actually, they used to say that he stepped from one of the windows from the room itself (the far right window in the photo I have included here). Now they say he stepped from a window that used to be above what is now the entrance to the building. Either way, it is said that he wore two shirts because it was cold and he didn’t want people to think he was shivering with fear.

Shortly after leaving Banqueting House, when heading south on Whitehall, the street becomes Parliament Street, which then empties into Parliament Square. Once in Parliament Square, facing east is a great view of the Palace of Westminster, aka Parliament. Several statues of mostly Prime Ministers stand around the square. But there are a couple of non-Prime Ministers there too. Looking west across the street, you will find Abraham Lincoln and, just before crossing the street to go to Saint Margaret’s Church, you can see Nelson Mandella.

Originally built in the 12^th century and rebuilt in the early 16^th century, St Margaret’s has been the site of several wedding over the centuries, including John Milton, Samuel Pepys, and Winston Churchill. This St Margaret is not the one from Scotland, but a 4^th century martyr from Antioch. There is also a St Margaret of York and a St Margaret of Cortona.

In the church is a window commemorating Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Sir Walter Raleigh, executed across the street in Old Palace Yard, is among those buried here. Another window shows him in happier times with Queen Elizabeth I and Edmund Spenser, the poet who wrote The Faerie Queen.

Next to St Margaret’s is the visitor’s entrance to Westminster Abbey. I had to stand in line for a bit, but it wasn’t really too bad. I have experienced longer lines before and since. I was buying my ticket there instead of in advance online. With the online advance ticket, there is a special “skip the line” entrance. To get the advance ticket, it is necessary to specify a particular time slot. I didn’t want to do that on this trip to stay a little more flexible. So I took my chances with the line.

Westminster Abbey is one of my favorite places. I visit pretty much every time I am in London. It is amazing and overwhelming at the same time. Some people have asked in the past why I go to see a place I have been to before. I’ve already seen it; why would I want to see it again?

One answer is that it might have been a very long time ago that I saw it and my memories are fuzzy (not the case with Westminster, but it had been 13 years since I saw it last). Another answer is that, with a place that I find fascinating, I can see things and experience things that I have never seen or experienced before. Then there is that fact that things change. How can an over 1,000 year old church change? You’d be surprised.

The coronation throne used to sit behind the Shrine of Edward the Confessor. It could be easily missed there unless one knew to look for it or had a guide point it out. By 2016, it was up in the front of the abbey in its own special room. The portrait of King Richard II (the fella I had seen David Tennant portray onstage in NYC at the beginning of this trip), was now just outside of where the throne sat. Richard is seated in that throne in the portrait, which used to be just inside of the entrance to the Royal Chapels. There, loads of people missed out on seeing him. The portrait is pretty cool. It was painted in 1390 at Richard’s request and therefore should be a pretty accurate portrayal.

Unfortunately, photography is not allowed inside of the abbey, so I can’t include a photo that I took of the painting However, I have included an official photo of it from the abbey’s website. He was only ten years old when crowned King of England. His father had died a year earlier, so he succeeded his grandfather, Edward III in 1377. He was deposed in 1399 by Henry Bolingbrooke (King Henry IV) and subsequently murdered while in captivity. He was 33.

Another change was that Westminster Abbey now had audio guides. The audio guide had numbers on it that corresponded to numbers on a map. No more crowding around a guide or trying to squeeze past a crowd.

The special floor in front of the altar had been uncovered as well. Previously this floor had been covered over for centuries and only visible for coronation ceremonies and rare special viewings. It has a type of inlaid stone called Cosmati and was installed by Henry III in 1268.

Founded in 960 AD by King Edgar and Saint Dunstan, the official name of the abbey is the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster. It is a “Royal Peculiar”, which means it falls under the direct jurisdiction of the reigning monarch. Various monarchs have made their marks on Westminster Abbey, most notably King Henry III, whose building spree in 1245 made it largely what is seen today. King Henry VII built the Lady Chapel with the magnificent fan vaulted ceiling in 1503.

In 2016, the abbey was in the process of creating a whole new space for its museum in galleries up above the abbey’s nave that would be opened in 2018. That particular area of the abbey had not been open to the public for 700 years.

I spent a couple of hours at Westminster Abbey, exploring it more thoroughly than I had ever been able to do so before. The exception was the Shrine of Edward the Confessor. It was off limits. It used to be open to a few people at a time, but things change.

I discovered after I got back home that there were Verger tours open at specific times on specific days. A Verger (who is basically a church caretaker) takes a small group of people into places of the abbey where tourists cannot go on their own, including the Shrine of Edward the Confessor. I decided the next time I traveled to London, I would arrange for a Verger tour.

Another change was that they now had a restaurant within the abbey. It was in the former food stores of the monks in the 14^th century and is called the Cellarium Café. I had some Welsh Rarebit (a fancy cheese toast) with salad, and an apricot tart with ice cream.

My foot was bothering me (the same one which had a stress fracture back in 2014), so I took a taxi back to the hotel (there were several parked out in front of the abbey), gave my foot a massage and wrapped it in an ace bandage. Once wrapped, it felt much better.

I decided I didn’t need to stay in the room with my foot elevated, but I didn’t want to go too far. So I walked the relatively short distance from the hotel to Temple Church.

Built in 1185 by the Templar Knights, the original part of the church is round, with a later rectangular addition. I have mentioned in past posts that I have loads of ancestors who were knights. Two became Templar Knights in their later years. They were buried in the crypt of the church with effigies upstairs.

One died in 1219 at the age of 73. He was a knight all of his life and even led (and won) a major battle at the age of seventy. He had served five kings – Henry II, his sons, the “Young King” Henry, Richard I, John and John’s son, Henry III. He decided to become a Templar Knight on his deathbed and was invested into the order.

Another died in 1226 at the age of 56. He came to the Templars a little later in life — in 1212 at the age of 42. He had been a busy guy – also in the service of Richard I, John and Henry III. He was a strong supporter of the Templars with gifts of lands in Yorkshire. So, as a generous member of the order, he was honored with burial at Temple Church.

Another ancestor died while on crusade in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1241 (at the age of 31). He was with Richard of Cornwall, who was King John’s second son and was involved with the refortification of Ascalon. A chunk of stone, found among the rubble in a former moat in Ascalon, had graffiti including this particular ancestor’s coat of arms. He is also buried in the Temple Church. He either doesn’t have an effigy, or his is one of the unidentified effigies, or his was destroyed when the church was bombed by the Germans during World War II. His body is down in the crypt somewhere.

Next time – Mystic locations of Stonehenge, Glastonbury, and Avebury

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