Westminster Abbey is one of the most important and well-known medieval buildings in Europe but, despite being studied by generations of scholars, there is still much to learn about its history and architecture.



The lantern over the centre of the church is a case in point. Edward the Confessor built a great tower here, which is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. When Henry III was rebuilding the Abbey in the 1250s, a new tower was begun which was to have dominated the Westminster skyline, but it was never finished and 150 years later an octagonal lantern like that at Ely Cathedral was built on the roof. It in turn was demolished in the sixteenth century, and in 1710 Sir Christopher Wren designed a 400-foot tower and spire, but did not live to see it built. His successor, Nicholas Hawksmoor, then produced a range of options for completing the lantern tower: a design was chosen and construction began in 1724. However, King George I died in 1727 and the Abbey had to be cleared of scaffolding for the coronation of his son. Although only the first stage of the new tower and spire had been built, construction never resumed and the inelegant stump was capped with a temporary roof. Subsequently, the lantern was burnt out in 1803 and again in 1941, but its shell remains today basically as Hawksmoor left it.



In this study, Professor Warwick Rodwell assembles for the first time all the historical and architectural evidence, to tell the remarkable story of Westminster Abbey's unfinished lantern tower over the last 950 years.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Westminster Abbey: the Crossing
• 2: Edward the Confessor’s Crossing Tower and Lantern
• 3: Henry III’s Unfinished Crossing Tower
  • What form of Crossing Tower was envisaged?
  • Existing Evidence
  • How much of the Lantern Tower was actually built?
  • Gaining Access to the Lantern Stage
• 4: The Late Medieval Stone and Timber Lantern
  • The Evidence of the Drawing in the Islip Roll
  • Access to the Lantern Stage
• 5: The Disappearance of the Medieval Lantern
  • The Fate of the Lantern Tower
  • Early Views of the Abbey
  • The Earliest Architects’ Drawings
• 6: Sir Christopher Wren’s Ambitious Tower and Spire
  • The First Report on the Fabric, 1713
  • Structural Strengthening to Support a Tower
  • William Dickinson’s Contribution
• 7: Begun, but still Incomplete: Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Crossing Tower and Spire
  • The Hawksmoor Drawings
  • Repairing the Damaged Medieval Crossing
  • Hawksmoor’s Model of the Crossing
  • Construction of the New Lantern Tower Begins
  • Work Stops for the Coronation, 1727
  • Executing Hawksmoor’s Final Design
  • Bowed Legs and Rent Fabric
  • The Crucial Evidence of Pietro Fabris
  • The Mysterious Woodperry House Painting
• 8: James Wyatt and the Fire of 1803
  • The Lantern Burns, July 1803
  • Wyatt’s Reconstruction
• 9: Sir George Gilbert Scott and ‘some ameliorations in the Lantern’
• 10: The Early Twentieth Century, World War II, and the Aftermath
  • Fire-Bombed, May 1941
  • Patching up the Lantern
  • Dykes Bower and the Crossing Tower: An Unfulfilled Desire?
• 11: New Surveys of the Crossing and Lantern, 2009–10
• 12: Summary and Conclusions
• Appendix: Function and Variety in Early Crossing Towers and their Superstructures
  • Late Antiquity
  • The Early Middle Ages
  • The Later Middle Ages
  • Conclusions
• Notes and References
• Index