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| A friendly verger greets tourists (who pay to get in unless they are really really worshipping) at Westminster Abbey. Enlarge photo |
Eddie the Verger is posted in his red robe with a warm smile at the exit of Westminster Abbey. His responsibility: to sort through those who want to go into the abbey to worship, and those tourists who fold their hands and reverently say, “I’d like a few moments with the Unknown Soldier, please.” (By masquerading as worshippers, sightseers can sidestep the £12 — or $24 — entrance fee to the church.)
Dropping by, I tell him I’m working on the Rick Steves book, and he says, “I’d like a word with that Rick Steves. He implies in his guidebook you can pop in to worship in order to get a free visit to the abbey.”
I tell him who I am and we sort it out. Really charmed by Eddie, I agree that rather than promote the fact that visitors can pop in anytime for free if they claim to be worshippers, I’ll encourage those tourists to actually experience the church the way it was designed to be experienced, by listing the busy daily schedule of worship services (for example, there is a sung evensong six days a week, when anyone is welcome for free).
Then Eddie took me into a place where no tourist goes — the Jerusalem Chamber, where the monks set up shop to actually translate the Bible from ancient Greek into English, creating the King James Version.
Knowing the dangers of getting the word of God into the people’s language, the potentially dire consequences for these reformers, and the importance of these heroic steps back in the 16th century, I got the same goose bumps as when I was in the Wartburg castle and saw the room Martin Luther holed up in while he did essentially the same thing for the German-speaking world.
Eddie deposited me in the abbey, and I visited like any other tourist — enjoying the great new audio tour narrated by Jeremy Irons. Listening to his soothing voice, I enjoyed some private time with great history: the marble effigy of Queen Elizabeth I, made from her death mask in 1603 — considered the most realistic likeness of her; the coronation chair that centuries of kings and queens sat upon right here in the abbey on their big day; the literary greats of England gathered as if conducting a posthumous storytelling session around the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer (Mr. Canterbury Tales); the poppies lining the tomb of Britain’s Unknown Soldier — with the US Congressional Medal of Honor given to him by General Pershing in 1921 hanging from the neighboring column; the statue of Martin Luther King added as an honorary member of this now heavenly English host; and so much more.
The steep admission fee includes this marvelous one-hour guided walk with the best-designed audio wands I’ve encountered anywhere in Europe. (These things are really getting good.) I started my visit wondering if I should produce my own audio tour for Westminster Abbey. Now that the abbey’s audioguide is included in the admission, I’m off the hook. Instead, I’ll strongly encourage all who visit to take this tour with gusto.
Then I stepped across the street into the basement of the Methodist church for a cheap soup and sandwich, wrapped a Band-Aid around my toe — cushioning the first blister of my trip — and headed out for more of London.
The first time I went to London, I did not go to Westminster Abbey. On my first RS tour, Best of Britain, Roy turned us over to the lovely Gillian who guided us through the Abbey. I thought to myself why in the world I did I skip this wonderful site years ago. I now tell people definitely do not skip the Abbey. I would glady pay the the entrance fee to listen to Jeremy and would attend Evensong. The Abbey has to be one of the top three sites to visit in London. Thanks for the nice memory.
Visiting Westminster Abbey on my London Paris RS tour last year was definitely a highlight of the tour (one of many). Queen Elizabeth I death effigy sent chills down my spine literally. Our tour guide had so many fascinating stories, too!
When we first visited the Abbey, in 1970, I don’t remember an entrance fee at all. We’ve been there other times also. Sweetie had expected the coronation chair to be some fancy kind of thing, and while the Queen likes it, it’s a very old and very rough looking board bench that looks like children carved their name in it years ago. We haven’t attended an Evensong in the Abbey, but we did visit a chapel service in St. Paul’s Cathedral conducted by the chaplain to the Queen. I hope this is not against the rules, but for the best photo ever taken of London, by anyone, see http://www.travel-tidbits.com/tidbits/002245.shtml. I believe those are the Abbey towers on the far left.
I took the RS 21 day tour last year, and for me the “goose bump” moment was when we went to the Anne Frank house and I realized I was standing in the same room she lived in, looking thru the windows at the same scenery she saw. Not exactly the same as what you posted about the churches, but it was truly a moment when I felt connected to the tides of history.
What a fantastic entry; must have been a fun converstation between you and Eddie. thanks for the info on the audio guide, that would definitely help to make the fee a bit more reasonable
Charming entry!
I remember my trip to Wartburg and the guide telling us that this was where Luther hurled the ink pot at the devil! The same weekend we saw Buchenwald and you knew that evil was surely still in the world. It’s been a long, long time since that trip, but the memories and now and then the goose bumps have stayed with me. Pam
I agree that the best way to experience any church is to attend a service, and evensong is ideal, not least since it’s a simplified form of the monastic prayer that Westminster Abbey was built for. But the King James Bible was done in the 17th century, by Protestant scholars in an officially Protestant England, with royal encouragement. The monks had been driven out of Westminster Abbey long before. The community was destroyed under Henry VIII, restored by Mary I, then destroyed again under Elizabeth I in 1559. (But modern English Benedictines are the spiritual descendants, in a special way, of the monks of Westminster. For that story, see: http://www.plantata.org.uk/index.php) I’m a medieval historian, so I always feel a twinge of sadness at places like Westminster Abbey, knowing how much was lost and destroyed in the upheaval of the 16th century. I did research many years ago in the chapter library there (another place tourists don’t go), and when I walked in the cloister, I did so knowing it was where the monks whose documents I was looking at would have walked and sat to read.
While attending the servies does avoid an entrance fee, attending the services just makes the experience richer. Lynn and I did the same thing – Evensong at Westminster and St. Pauls, Sunday Mass at St. Sulpice in Paris. Attending services just heightens the experience. I remember sitting at St. Pauls during Evensong just looking at the dome and taking in all the details. I would have missed them if I was just passing through as a tourist. It was fun to see how worship was the same in some ways, and different in so many others. Yet another insight gained from travel.
During the approximately 1,500 nights my Sweetie and I spent together away from “home,†we so often said: What a fascinating place for these people to live! What a fascinating place for us to visit! If we had ever found we had stopped saying that, we would have just stayed at home. And our travels obviously included much more than a 1,000 nights in Europe. (I also spent at least 1,000 additional nights on business trips in the USA.)
Churches are so interesting because we found on our second trip to Italy this year, you go to all the trouble to get tickets to the most popular churches and we just walked into some very unassuming ones, and could not believe our eyes! They were so unbelieviable Baroque styles. So it pays to just explore and see what is behind some of those plain doors. I don’t know what it is about blister, every year that we get older and travel I end up with my feet covered with them too!
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