Westminster Abbey: What Is Actually Inside

Westminster Abbey has the Coronation Chair. It was made in 1300 to 1301, has held the Stone of Scone beneath the seat since then (with an interruption from 1996 to 2023 when the stone was returned to Scotland), and has schoolboy graffiti carved into the back from the 18th century. Boys from Westminster School were allowed to use the abbey during that period and apparently had time on their hands. The chair is more worn, smaller, and more real-looking than any reproduction suggests, and it has been used in every coronation since Edward II in 1308.

Westminster Abbey is an active church, the site of every English coronation since 1066, and the burial place of around 3,300 people including scientists, monarchs, poets, soldiers, and statesmen. The building is mostly 13th century, begun by Henry III who wanted to rebuild the earlier Norman church in a French Gothic style. The nave is the tallest Gothic nave in Britain at 31 metres. Construction continued in phases over several centuries, with the west towers completed only in 1745.

How to Visit

Adult entry is GBP 29 (2026 prices). No photography inside for regular visitors. Audio guides are included and worth using: the commentary covers things the interpretive panels don’t. Open Monday to Saturday 09:30 to 16:30, last entry 14:30. Closed Sundays except for worship. Free to attend services. The 08:00 Holy Communion and 17:00 Choral Evensong are open without payment. Book online to save GBP 2 and choose an entry time; the queue without a booking is worst between 10:00 and 13:00.

What to Find Inside

Poets’ Corner is in the south transept. Geoffrey Chaucer is buried here, the first major burial. Charles Dickens is buried here on a modest floor slab by his own request; Rudyard Kipling and Henry James are also actual burials. Shakespeare, Hardy, Jane Austen, Burns, and about 100 others are memorialised here without any body beneath. Walk carefully; it is easy to be standing on someone significant.

The Henry VII Lady Chapel at the east end (built 1503 to 1519) has fan vaulting on the ceiling described by most architectural historians as the finest medieval stonework in England. The stone is carved into a continuous branching canopy of extraordinary precision. Henry VII and his queen Elizabeth of York are buried directly under the altar.

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is just inside the west entrance on the floor. A British soldier killed in World War I, unidentified, was buried here in 1920 with soil from the main battlefields. The French Legion d’honneur medal on the grave is the only decoration allowed to be given to an unnamed person. It is the most visited grave in the world. Many visitors walk past it without stopping.

The Cloisters (included in admission, accessed from the south side) are quiet and the medieval cloister garden is one of the more peaceful spaces in central London. The Chapter House (round, 13th century, where the House of Commons met from 1257 to 1547) is accessible from the cloister.

Around the Abbey

Houses of Parliament is directly adjacent. Churchill War Rooms, 10 minutes’ walk on King Charles Street, is the underground bunker from which Churchill directed the war and is one of the best war museums in London (entry around GBP 26). St Margaret’s Church between the Abbey and Parliament is the parish church of the House of Commons; Sir Walter Raleigh is buried in the chancel and it is usually empty compared to the Abbey.

Regency Cafe on Regency Street (10 minutes’ walk) has a full English breakfast under GBP 10 in an original 1940s interior. Worth the detour.