Westminster Abbey: Henry III's Gothic Rebuilding of 1245

Westminster Abbey, the great church beside the Palace of Westminster in London, owes its present Gothic form chiefly to King Henry III, who began rebuilding it in 1245. Henry tore down the Romanesque church of Edward the Confessor and built in its place a church in the latest French style, centred on a magnificent new shrine for the Confessor. The result became England’s coronation church and royal mausoleum.

Background: the Confessor’s abbey

King Edward the Confessor had rebuilt the Benedictine abbey at Westminster in the Romanesque style. It was consecrated on 28 December 1065, days before his death in January 1066, and he was buried there. William the Conqueror was crowned in the abbey on Christmas Day 1066, starting a coronation tradition that continues today.

Edward was canonised in 1161. Henry III, king from 1216, made the Confessor his patron saint and even named his eldest son Edward. In 1220 the young king laid the foundation stone of a new Lady Chapel at the abbey’s east end, but his real ambition came later.

Rebuilding begins, 1245

In July 1245 demolition of the old east end began. Henry paid for the work himself, and royal accounts record a vast flow of money, materials and labour. Historians estimate the total cost at around 40,000 to 50,000 pounds.

The first master mason was Henry of Reyns, whose name may mean “of Reims”, followed by John of Gloucester from about 1253 and Robert of Beverley from about 1260. Their design borrowed heavily from French cathedrals such as Reims and from Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle, which Henry admired on a visit to Paris in 1254.

A French Gothic church in England

The new church had features unusual in England: a polygonal east end with radiating chapels, flying buttresses, bar tracery in the windows, and great rose windows in the transepts. The nave vault, about 31 metres high, is the tallest of any medieval church in England.

English touches remained, including the generous use of dark Purbeck marble and richly carved surfaces such as the diaper patterns on the walls. The octagonal Chapter House, completed by about 1259, was one of the largest in England and has some of the finest surviving medieval floor tiles.

The shrine and the Cosmati pavement

The heart of the project was the shrine of Edward the Confessor behind the high altar. Its base was decorated in Cosmati work, inlaid stone and glass mosaic made by Italian craftsmen from Rome. Before the high altar, the Great Pavement, signed by the craftsman Odoricus and dated 1268, shows a complex geometric design.

On 13 October 1269 the church was consecrated and the Confessor’s body was carried to the new shrine in a grand ceremony attended by the king and his court. Henry himself died on 16 November 1272 and was buried in the abbey, later moved to his own tomb with a gilt-bronze effigy.

Henry’s motives

Personal devotion was central. Henry celebrated the Confessor’s feast days with lavish ceremony and gave rich gifts to the shrine. He also wanted to rival the French monarchy, whose kings were buried at Saint-Denis and whose relics were displayed in the Sainte-Chapelle. By honouring an English saint-king and preparing a burial place beside him, Henry presented his own dynasty as holy and legitimate.

The project also linked the abbey closely to the nearby royal palace, the centre of government. Henry’s spending on the church continued even as his finances came under strain, and it formed part of the background to the baronial crisis that led to Simon de Montfort’s Parliament in 1265.

Key people

• Henry III (1207–1272): king of England from 1216, who funded and directed the rebuilding.
• Edward the Confessor (c. 1003–1066): the saint-king whose shrine was the centre of the new church.
• Henry of Reyns: first master mason, in charge from 1245 to about 1253.
• John of Gloucester and Robert of Beverley: his successors as master masons.
• Richard of Ware: abbot of Westminster, who brought the Cosmati craftsmen from Rome.

Completing the church

When Henry died, the east end, transepts, choir and the first bays of the nave were complete. The old Romanesque nave stood for another century. From 1376 the nave was rebuilt, with the master mason Henry Yevele among those involved, closely following Henry III’s design, so that the church looks remarkably unified. Henry VII’s Lady Chapel was added in the early sixteenth century, and the western towers by Nicholas Hawksmoor were completed in 1745.

Legacy

Henry III turned Westminster into the spiritual centre of English monarchy. Nearly every English and British monarch has been crowned there, and many kings and queens are buried around the Confessor’s shrine. Edward I added the Coronation Chair around 1300.

The abbey has also become a national place of memory, from Poets’ Corner to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, created in 1920. The north transept front was heavily restored in the late nineteenth century by George Gilbert Scott and John Loughborough Pearson.

Timeline

• 1065, 28 December: Edward the Confessor’s abbey is consecrated.
• 1161: Edward the Confessor is canonised.
• 1220: Henry III lays the foundation stone of a new Lady Chapel.
• 1245, July: Demolition and rebuilding of the east end begin.
• c. 1259: The Chapter House is completed.
• 1268: The Cosmati Great Pavement is laid.
• 1269, 13 October: The new church is consecrated and the shrine dedicated.
• 1272, 16 November: Henry III dies.

Why it matters

Henry III’s rebuilding gave England its most important royal church and one of its finest Gothic buildings. It bound the monarchy to the cult of a saint-king and created the setting in which English and British rulers have been crowned ever since.