Poets' Corner and so much more


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May 6th 2022
Published: May 28th 2022
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Our primary targets for today's assault on London were Westminster Abbey, the Churchill War Rooms, and the London Eye.

Westminster Abbey is a huge edifice nearby Parliament and Big Ben. The church is officially the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster. Its founding at that site is said to have originated when a fisherman boy saw a vision of St. Peter at the site. Thus began a tradition of the Fishmongers Company presenting the church a salmon every year, a practice that extends back for centuries.In 1080 Sulcard reported that a church had been built on the site in the 7th century CE, but there is little evidence to positively support that. What is known from recorded history is that an order of Benedictine monks was established there by St. Dunstan and King Edgar in the 960's or early 970's. In the late 1040's Edward the Confessor began construction of a church there that was to serve as a royal burial church. It was finished just in time, being consecrated in December 1065, just one week before Edward's death. He was buried there. His successor, Harold II, was probably crowned there, but the first documented coronation was the 1066 coronation of William The Conqueror, of whom we shall say more later. All British monarchs since that time have been coronated at Westminster.

The present building was begun in 1245 by Henry III, again to serve as his burial site. (Henry III was the son of John, protagonist of the Robin Hood legends. The new building was consecrated in 1269, and underwent various and sundry renovations until 1540, when Henry VIII established the Diocese of Westminster and granted a charter to the abbey church as its cathedral. This spared it the dissolution and destruction visited upon other abbey churches throughout the kingdom by Henry VIII's edict following failure of the Catholic Church to grant him an annulment of his 19 year marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

So much for the history of the building. It was built as a burial church, and a burial church it has remained. It is, of course, famous for Poets' Corner, wherein are buried or memorialized scores of those who have contributed to British culture, mostly writers. The first to be buried here was Geoffrey Chaucer, in 1400. Available evidence suggests that his interment was more related to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster than to his being the author of The Miller's Tale. To this day I can still remember parts of the preamble to the Canterbury Tales which Miss Katherine made us memorize.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

...

So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

Since 1400 dozens more have been memorialized in this place some of whom are buried here and others of which are buried elsewhere but honored with a Poets' Corner monument of some sort. When the walls and floor space began running out, they placed windows for additional memorials, and now at least 6 are memorialized there, including Oscar Wilde (buried in Père- Lachaise cemetery in Paris).

As interested as I was in the writers of Poets' Corner, such as T.S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Charles DIckens, etc. I was at least equally entranced at the large number of scientists and mathematicians, including a number of the famous British Physicists. Famously, Sir Isaac Newton occupies a prominent place with a large memorial. He is accompanied nearby by Michael Faraday, James Clerk-Maxwell, William Thomson Lord Kelvin, Stephen Hawking, and Charles Darwin. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that these luminaries essentially defined our scientific world.

Isaac Newton - invented infinitesimal calculus (along with Leibniz), defined the laws of motion and gravitation that remain valid except when we are talking about things moving VERY rapidly (better described by special relativity), VERY massive (general relativity), or VERY small (quantum mechanics). Also did seminal work on optics, planetary motion, color, and made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound.

Michael Faraday - discovered benzene, introduced theories in electromagnetism that led to the modern concept of electromagnetic fields, did the initial work on electromagnetic induction that led to modern electrical motors, and discovered the laws of electrolysis. The standard unit of capacitance is the farad

James Clerk-Maxwell - took the work of Faraday (whose mathematical knowledge was limited to simple algebra) and gave it a mathematical basis in the now famous Maxwell equations, this done at age 24. Showed that white light was actually a mixture of red, green, and blue. Discovered and described photoelasticity. Showed mathematically that the rings of Saturn could not be either solid or fluid, but must be composed of particles independently orbiting Saturn, a proposal verified by the Voyager spacecraft.

William Thomson Lord Kelvin - contributed greatly to the mathematical underpinnings of the laws of thermodynamics and first proposed an absolute temperature scale

Stephen Hawking - well known for his work on black holes, for showing that the beginning of the universe must have been a singularity, and work on the nature of time. His cremains are interred between Darwin and Newton, and his epitaph consists of the Bekenstein-Hawking equation as per his request

Charles Darwin - the discoverer, along with Alfred Russell Wallace, of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin is generally credited with this, but Wallace independently and simultaneously derived the same principle, although there were slight differences between their two formulations (Darwin thought that natural selection occurred from environmental forces, while Wallace thought it was from individual competition)

Musical composers are also well represented in the Abbey, including Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Lastly, there are large numbers of monarchs, minor royalty, military figures, explorers (such as David Livingstone), and other persons buried there because of their prominence or connection to the Abbey. Perhaps among the more unusual are Harold I, who was buried there and then, at the order of his half-brother and successor, Harthacnut (Canute III), his body was disinterred, beheaded and thrown into a sewer, then retrieved and thrown into a fen near the Thames, then retrieved again by fishermen and turned over to the Danes who properly buried him at St. Clement Danes. Equally gruesome is the tale of Oliver Cromwell. Upon his death, Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey, but when the monarchy was restored his embalmed body was dug up, hung from a gallows along with his fellow Parliamentarian conspirers, and then beheaded, with the head place upon a spike outside Westminster Hall. His body was buried near Tyburn gallows (now the site of the Marble Arch, but his head was sent reportedly to Sidney Sussex College, where is is said to be buried to this day. Bizarrely, the statue of him that was placed at the time of his original burial remains in Westminster Abbey, just feet from that of Benjamin Disraeli, twice prime minister of Great Britain and the only Jewish person ever to serve in that office.

The only gravesite that cannot be walked on in Westminster Abbey is that of the British unknown soldier from World War I. Unlike the tomb of similar function in the USA, there is little pomp or ceremony attached to this one on a regular basis.

After leaving Westminster Abbey, we went to a nearby pub for a meat pie and a pint, then headed to the Churchill War Rooms. Recognizing a need for a secure place for governmental war functions, but not wishing to be seen as abandoning London, the British government decided to construct a large underground bunker under the Public Offices building, near to Downing Street and Parliament. In the midst of the London blitz, they even managed to surreptitiously put in a 3 meter thick room without any sign visible from above ground. Here, Churchill and his War Cabinet met and planned and directed the war effort. The complex included sleeping quarters, dining, and pools of typists and other clerical workers. Churchill had his own separate quarters here, although he was famous for slipping away and sleeping above ground. There was a special phone with a connection to Washington, and a complete functioning switchboard. Because people were often underground for protracted periods of time, an above ground meteorological station reported the weather to those below, with the weather being changed to "windy" whenever bombing was occurring. The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, and the next day everyone abandoned this underground complex and it is has remained virtually untouched since that time, with only the necessary changes to make it a visitable museum. Maps and charts on the wall remain as they were. Sugar cubes were found in a desk, pens and pencils and charting instruments remain where they were abandoned. There is nowhere the allure here that exists in larger sights in London, but it remains an interesting place to visit, particularly for those who are enamored of World War II history as I am. A part of the complex has now been turned into an interactive museum of Winston Churchill.

After leaving the War Rooms, we walked less than a mile to the London Eye, along a broad promenade that lines the Thames. The London Eye is the world's tallest cantilevered observation wheel, holding 32 passenger pods shaped like lozenges, with each pod holding up to 25 people. The wheel moves so slowly that boarding and departing the capsules is usually done with stopping the wheel, although it can be stopped to allow safer embarkation of the disable etc. One complete revolution takes about 30 minutes, and afford panoramic views of London from heights up to about 400 feet. It is the most popular paid tourist attraction in London. When we left our turn on the wheel, we wandered further down the promenade and stopped briefly to watch a Houdini wannabe perform simple magic tricks and escape from a strait jacket. Surprisingly, there were not swarms of other buskers there.


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