December 28

Westminster Abbey in London was consecrated on December 28, 1065, though it was not completed until 1090. The largely Gothic church was begun between 1042-1052 in the Norman Romanesque style, by the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, as a royal burial church. William the Conqueror was crowned here (1066) and many English and British monarchs thereafter (since 1308, sitting in King Edward’s Chair, pictured). Little of the original structure remains. The present church was begun in 1245, and the two Gothic Revival towers were started in 1722. Westminster was England’s third seat of learning after Oxford and Cambridge until the 19th century. Scholars translated the first third of the King James Bible Old Testament and the last half of the New Testament at Westminster. The structure suffered minor damage during the German Blitz in 1940.