London Sightseeing Pass: Westminster Palace and Abbey & St Margaret’s Church continue… August 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Ireland, Library, London, Museum, Rail Pass, Scotland, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trip, Wellington , trackbackA cult developed around Edward. There were accounts of him healing the sick while he was alive, and rumours of cures at his tomb continued. In 1102 it was opened and his body found incorrupt. After a campaign lasting for decades, Edward the Confessor was canonized in 1161. His body was raised from the tomb before the high altar and replaced in a richly ornamented shrine, the key, sacred focal point of the Abbey.
The other principle element of the Abbey, its setting for coronations, could be thought to be essentially secular, but this, too, has it esoteric aspects. This is revealed by two other key features within the Abbey — the Cosmati Pavement and the Stone of Scone set in the Coronation Chair.
In the thirteenth century, Henry III had the Italian School of Cosmati create mosaics on the floors of the Sanctuary and the Confessor’s Chapel, the base of his shrine and various tomb bases, including that of Henry III himself. The design on the Sanctuary floor was completed in 1268. It is of prime significance because it is on this spot that the annointing, consecration and crowning of monarchs takes place, with a throne in the centre of the design (which, for much of the rest of the time, is covered with a carpet). This Cosmati Pavement is a little over 28 feet (8.5m) square with a wide border, and it contains another square set diamond-wise, with four circles in the four angles between the inner and outer squares and five more within the inner square. The four corner circles in the inner square mark the four compass points. Inside the border of the outer square, fragments of words in brass- lettered Lombardic script tell that Henry III comissioned the design. Lettering that was carried in the quatrefoil formed by the four circles exterior to the inner square has disappeared, but it described a method of calculating the end of the world. Parts of the innermost inscription, around the central circle, survive and can be translated as: ‘Here the sphere points to the microcosm, the globe to the archetype.’ This ‘alludes to the cosmic significance of the pavement and the coronation ritual performed upon it’ .8 It may possibly be the case that the mosaic also has some greater geomantic significance — hinted at by the cardinal arrangement of the inner circles — yet to be discovered, for a similar design, in the German Xanten Cathedral, was found by Josef Heinsch to relate to the geographical layout of ancient sacred sites around the cathedral.
There are two parts to the Coronation Service: the secret, Sacremental Coronation, described above, conducted by the Lords Spiritual, and the Enthronement and Homage, witnessed by the Lords Temporal. The throne used for this second, more public part of the ritual is not the Coronation Chair, however, which is to be found between the High Altar and the Confessor’s Shrine when not in use. The Coronation Chair is the ‘magical’ throne that is placed in the centre of the Cosmati Pavement during the sacred aspect of the ritual.
This oak Chair was made in 1300 at the request of Edward I, to house the Stone of Scone. This four-hundredweight (200kg) block of Old Red Sandstone was captured from the Scots by Edward in 1296. The stone is a ‘king stone‘, part of a tradition of utmost antiquity which associates certain stones with the special power of conferring kingship. Further up the Thames, for example, at Kingston-upon- Thames, a stone, now standing enclosed by iron railings, was once used for the inauguration of Saxon kings. Sometimes a king stone was fashioned into a seat, as at Castlereagh, Ireland, for instance, or had the shape of footprints carved into it, in which the new king stood, as was the tradition on the Scottish island of Islay. The concept of the king stone is closely related to the ancient idea of kings being divine or semi-divine, and being literal symbols of the land — ‘the king and the land are one’. This image is presented in the story of the Grail, in which, also, Arthur proves his kingship by being the only one able to pull the sword Excalibur from a block of stone. Ireland had several king stones, perhaps the most famous being the Lia Fail on Tara, the original residence of the high kings of Ireland. This stone was said to cry out when the correct king was crowned. Such traditions seem to go back to at least Druidic, Iron Age, times, and they in turn most probably emerged from even older themes — the idea of a stone as the omphalos probably pre-dated the king stone concept.
It was from Ireland that the Stone of Scone was said to have been brought to Scotland, but legend claims the stone to have come originally from Solomon’s Temple, or to have been the stone on which Jacob slept when he had his visionary dream of angels ascending a ladder to heaven. At Scone, in Perthshire (where Old Red Sandstone is to be found!), 34 Scottish kings were inaugurated on the stone, and it can be inferred that Edward I took the ‘Stone of Destiny’, as it is also known, in order to break that power in Scotland and centre it in London. The stone was reshaped somewhat to fit into the ledge beneath the seat of the Coronation Chair, and all but one of the monarchs of Britain have been inaugrated above it since 1308. It was reclaimed by Scottish Nationalists in 1950, but returned in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
Finally, the old ley hunter Alfred Watkins noted geomantic aspects of the siting of Westminster Abbey. In plotting a line from the Tower of London to Southwark Cathedral, he made the interesting observation that the line goes on to Westminster. As we shall see in the next entry, the site of the Tower is likely to be prehistoric, and recent archaeological work beneath Southwark Cathedral shows it to have been built on a pagan shrine.Watkins‘ line therefore links three key pre-Christian, and possibly prehistoric, sites in London. He further noted that the alignment converges with a line down the middle of Tothill Street, to a point in Wellington Barracks. Lines on the exact orientation of Westminster Abbey and the adjacent St Margaret’s Church were then laid down, and they too converge to the above point. Here, then, are four indications (one of them Tothill Street) of convergence to one point.
St Margaret’s stands immediately to the north of the Abbey, and three churches are known to have stood on the site. No one knows when the first foundation was made, but the present church is essentially medieval. It is the parish church of the House of Commons. Its axis is slewed slightly southwards to that of the Abbey, so the two axial lines do converge as Watkins claimed. Wellington Barracks is on Buckingham Gate, and Watkins supposed the convergence point there to have been the site of the old Tot Hill, but this does not agree with Rocque’s map, if that does in fact show the mound.
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