Bookable
Edward the Confessor’s abbey
In about 959, Dunstan and King Edgar settled Benedictine monks on the site. Edward the Confessor rebuilt the abbey church from the 1040s, and it was consecrated on 28 December 1065, days before his death. William the Conqueror was crowned there in 1066, the first documented coronation in the Abbey.


Henry III’s Gothic church
Henry III began rebuilding the church in the Gothic style on 6 July 1245, and the new church was consecrated on 13 October 1269. Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, with its fan-vaulted ceiling, was begun in 1503, and the western towers were added in the 1740s to designs by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James.
A Royal Peculiar
After the Benedictine monks were ejected in 1559, Elizabeth I re-established the Abbey in 1560 as the Collegiate Church of St Peter, a Royal Peculiar. English and British monarchs have been crowned here since 1066, most recently King Charles III on 6 May 2023.



