It was the first church in England built in the Romanesque style. St Peter's Abbey at the time of Edward's funeral, as depicted in the Bayeux TapestryД«etween 10, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. 1042: Edward the Confessor starts rebuilding St Peter's Abbey The recorded origins of the Abbey date to the 960s or early 970s, when Saint Dunstan and King Edgar installed a community of Benedictine monks on the site. This seems to have been quoted as the origin of the salmon that Thames fishermen offered to the abbey in later years, a custom still observed annually by the Fishmongers' Company. 1.4 1722вЂ“1745: Western towers constructedДЄ late tradition claims that Aldrich, a young fisherman on the River Thames, had a vision of Saint Peter near the site.1.3 16th and 17th centuries: dissolution and restoration.1.1 1042: Edward the Confessor starts rebuilding St Peter's Abbey.As such, Westminster Abbey is sometimes described as 'Britain's Valhalla', after the iconic hall of the chosen heroes in Norse mythology. The Abbey is the burial site of more than 3,300 people, usually of prominence in British history: at least 16 monarchs, eight prime ministers, poets laureate, actors, scientists, military leaders, and the Unknown Warrior-the first person interred in the Abbey's Poets' Corner was Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400.

The abbey was restored to the Benedictines by Mary I in 1556, then in 1559 made a royal peculiar-a church responsible directly to the sovereign-by Queen Elizabeth I. It then served as the cathedral of the Diocese of Westminster until 1550, then as a second cathedral of the Diocese of London until 1556. The church was originally part of a Catholic Benedictine abbey, which was dissolved in 1539. Construction of the present church began in 1245 on the orders of King Henry III. ДЄccording to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site (then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island)) in the seventh century at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Sixteen royal weddings have occurred at the Abbey since 1100. Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have occurred in Westminster Abbey. It is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and a burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. Westminster Abbey (The Collegiate Church of St Peter)

Plaster ring extension