The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

The Chapel dedicated to St. Benedict in the Abbey has already been mentioned two or three times. This Chapel is just at the entrance of the South Ambulatory.

On the south side of the Abbey Church, and protected by it from the cold north, lies the beautiful cloister where the monks and their pupils spent a great deal of their time. The Cloister-walks form a quadrangle, with a large grass plot in the middle. Under that peaceful grass plot many of the Westminster monks are resting, and many people are buried in the Cloister itself.

The present Cloister is of different dates. Parts of the East and North Walks are of the time of Henry III and Edward I. Another part of the East Walk was built in the reign of Edward III, and the South and West Walks were built some years later by Abbot Litlington. It is said that every style of English architecture can be seen in the Westminster Cloisters; and this is true, because, as we shall see, some of the old Norman Cloister remains, and in the great Cloister we can find the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular styles.

The Cloister was not a burial-place only. It was a very important part of the monastery, as much of the daily life went on there.

In those days the windows had glass in them; the floor and benches were strewn with straw and hay in summer, and with rushes in winter. The walls were decorated with frescoes, and lamps hung from the vaulting.

The East Cloister was given up to the Abbot, who was a great personage. Whenever he passed, every one rose and bowed and kept silence. The monks themselves used the North Cloister, where the Prior also sate. The novices and pupils worked at their lessons in the West Cloister. The pupils sate one behind the other; they were not allowed to make jokes or to make signals to one another. They had to talk always in French. They were to take great care about their writing and illuminations, and no doubt many beautiful old illuminated missals and other books came forth from those Cloister walks at Westminster.

In the South Cloister is a very large bluish gravestone, reminding us of the terrible plague which visited most of Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, and which was called “The Black Death.” Twenty-six of the Westminster monks, including the Abbot, died of the Black Death in 1348–49, and the monks are supposed to have been buried beneath this huge gravestone, which used to be called “Long Meg.” The Abbot, Byrcheston, was buried near the Chapter-House entrance, in the part of the Cloister which was built in his time.

Close to “Long Meg” are the graves of several of the Abbots of Norman and early Plantagenet times. Three of the figures still remain close to the wall, but the names are not carved over the right gravestones. After 1220 it became the custom to bury the Abbots in the church itself.

In the East Cloister there is a beautiful carved archway, which forms the entrance to a lovely little passage with very sharply pointed arches. This passage leads into the Chapter-House, one of the finest parts of the Abbey buildings. The “incomparable Chapter-House,” as an old chronicler calls it, was begun by Henry III in 1250. It is eight-sided, and the vault springs from a tall and graceful central pillar, just as the branches spring from a palm tree. The windows are very famous for their beautiful tracery. The stained glass in them is modern, and is a memorial to the late Dean Stanley.

The walls were once covered with paintings, but these have been sadly destroyed, and only very few have been preserved. In the glass cases which are now placed in the Chapter-House are many most interesting and valuable things, such as the great illuminated missal presented to the Abbey by Abbot Litlington, and charters granted to the Abbey by various Kings, from the Saxon times onward.