WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Taranaki Daily News, 11 October 1929, Page 12

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

THE NATION’S SACRED DEAD. PLACE FULL TO OVERFLOWING. “We step cautiously and softly about, as if fearful of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb. It seems as if‘the awful nature of the placj presses down up on the soul, and hushes the. beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds, and the earth with their redo wn.” So wrote Washington Irving, and that is undoubtedly the right spirit in. which to go and see Westminster Abbey, the national Valhalla, but truth compels one. to say that • there are moments when one feels less impressed, states an overseas writer. Burial within the sacred walls is considered as the last and greatest honour which the nation can bestow on the most deserving of her offspring. But it has been greatly abused in the past, and to-day the interipi’ of this grand old fame is in places a huddle of monuments and busts, reminding one painfully of a stonemason’s yard. . That is the simple truth, and the sooner we do something towards a clearing out the better. Some of the monuments are in egregiously bad taste, and many of diem are of such huge size that they quite disfigure the architectural effect. There is, for instance, the first on the left after one enters by the door of the north transept—the one usually used by the public. This is a huge affair in a debased style, erected to the memory of a Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1711. It entirely fills the space between two pillars and reaches right up to the capitals; quite dwarfing everything for yards round. Poets’ Corner is so crowded that it resembles a cabinet of curios rather than a corner of a place of worship. The glory of Westminster is the. Chapel of Henry VII., at the east end, and the glory of that chapel is the fantracery ceiling with its fantastic pendentives, each surface being covered with rich fretwork, exhibiting the floral perpendicular style in its- greatest luxuriance.

The rest of the Abbey, with the exception of the incongruous towers by Wren and some remains said to be Norman, is Early English. There is said to have been a church on the site from about 616, but the regular establishment of the Abbey may be credited to Edward the Confessor. His church was entirely rebuilt in the later half of the thirteenth century by Henry 111. and his son, Edw'ard I. . There are so many famous men buried in the Abbey and so many commemorated there that a mere list would be formidable. Oddly enough there are also some very obscure men buried there, too—and even children, Kings, nobles, statesmen, warriors, sailors, authors, poets —their tombs lie all around, and some of their monuments are beautiful, while some are the reverse. Some occupy many fathoms of ground, while others are content with much less than the “six feet of earth,” which most men inherit when they die. Ben Johson, for instance, w r as buried upright—space W'as so circumscribed.