Westminster Abbey Chapter House

This volume tells the complete story of the Westminster Abbey chapter house, which ranks as one of the spectacular achievements of European Gothic art and architecture; and that is precisely what its builder, King Henry III, intended. Begun in the mid-1240s, and completed within a decade, its pre-eminence was recognized in its own day, when the chronicler Matthew Paris described Westminster as having a chapter house beyond compare.

Papers by leading scholars in the field of medieval archaeology, art and architecture reveal the reasons for

the construction of the chapter house and trace the possible influences upon the master mason in charge

of the project. The subsequent history of the structure is recounted as it evolved from a meeting place of the monks, and occasionally of Parliament, and a royal treasury into a repository for government archives after the Dissolution, home until the late 1850s to a precursor of the Public Record Office, through to its subsequent restoration at the hands of Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Now under the care of English Heritage and managed by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, the chapter house has just been cleaned and restored again, leading to the spectacular light-filled building that we see today, to which full justice is done by this richly illustrated book, filled with pictures of the architectural and sculptural details, the medieval tilework and the wall painting that justify the motto inscribed in the chapter house floor: 'as the rose is the flower of flowers, so is this the house of houses'.

Warwick Rodwell is Consultant Archaeologist to Westminster Abbey and Wells Cathedral (and formerly also to Bristol and Lichfield Cathedrals). Richard Mortimer has been the Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey since 1986.

300 pages, with 254 figures

Publish Date: May 2010