Curse You, Redwall!

The view crossing Westminster Bridge a half-hour before sunset.

I have a hard time with abbeys. On one hand, they're majestic, gorgeous, beautiful buildings.
On the other hand, friggin' Brian Jacques has ruined me for life. It's a kneejerk reaction. You say abbey, I say mice and squirrels.

The rodent gargoyles everywhere didn't help.

I went to Westminster Abbey the other night to go to Evensong. It's a nearly etherial church service, especially the way they do it there. It's very... it really is otherworldly. They sing the late medieval plainsong and the voices seem to float. We were lucky and got to sit in what's called the quire. It's where the choir sits.

I had a lot of pictures I wanted to take. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take pictures in the main space of the abbey. It was ok to take them in the chapterhouse and in the museum and in the cloisters, but not in the abbey proper. I did manage to get a couple of contraband pictures, thanks to the beauty that is the video camera I got for Christmas. It's glorious. It's terrifically easy to use, it has a wonderfully fast shutter speed, and it's silent. You can whip it out, steal a picture, and put it back in your pocket or bag before the scurrying little security guards realize what you've done.

Me in the cloisters, with the Abbey Green behind me. Kelly took this.

What a pretty tower!

The medieval chambers were definitely open for pictures, as was their museum. So here's some medieval architecture for those who like it. The chapterhouse in particular was very cool. A chapterhouse is basically a meeting room attached to a church. The one at Westminster is entirely  medieval, with glorious floor tiles and murals. The stained glass is modern, though, because most of it was destroyed in the Blitz.

This is the Pyxis Chamber.  They kept hosts and stuff in here.

Edmond Halley's memorial (he was buried in the floor). It's not just a comet- it's in the shape of the comet-thing that appears on the Bayeux Tapestry. Pretty nifty.

What's left of Captain Cook is buried in the wall here.

The stairs leading up to the chapterhouse.

The stained glass windows in the Chapterhouse.

A better shot of the stained glass windows.

Part of the medieval mural on the wall. All of the animals are labeled with things like "Krokodyle" and "Kamel".

This is a video I made. There's no narration- it's just as much of the chapterhouse's ceiling and walls as I could get. I'm very sorry for the sheer number of times I say 'medieval' in this piece. And also 'chapterhouse.' (I think 'chapterhouse' is a better word than 'medieval'.) But it's pretty cool to see all this stuff. The Abbey was started in 960, and some of the stuff even dates from then.

This is one of the remaining pieces of medieval stained glass.

This is the medieval altarpiece. They made a duplicate of it a few hundred years ago to use in the Abbey's main church.

The opposite side of the quire.

The church from my seat. It's beautiful in the lamplight.

So that's all my photographs of Westminster Abbey. Perhaps more work stuff later? Or a post about the rambling walks I take? Or some graffiti? Something edutaining.