The Westminster Abbey Sanctuary Pavement

Abstract

In 1245 King Henry III undertook the reconstruction of Westminster Abbey. In addition to transforming the Romanesque basilica of Edward the Confessor and erecting an octagonal chapter house, he provided for a mosaic pavement in the sanctuary. The pavement is centrally located within the church (Fig. 1). It lies in the first bay east of the crossing, occupying nearly the entire length and rather less of the bay's width. Directly before it, now separated by a pair of steps, is the high altar. A detail of the northeast corner reveals its present state of preservation (Fig. 2). In spite of frequent restoration numerous mosaic tesserae are either missing or damaged; and the solitary letter E in the border is one of the last survivors from the extensive verse inscription that once accompanied the pavement. To appreciate the pavement's former splendor, one must turn to older depictions, in particular an early nineteenth-century aquatint by J. White (Fig. 3). Although mosaic patterns are occasionally simplified and the remaining bronze letters of the inscription omitted, the engraving provides a reasonable impression of the overall design. A large central disk is surrounded by four intertwining circles. These are in turn inscribed in a square whose sides devolve into another set of four circles. A second square, with its sides rather than its corners now facing the cardinal points, encloses the configuration. The guilloche which appears along three sides of the square originally enframed the entire composition. The missing portion of the eastern side was destroyed in 1706 when the altar designed for the Royal Chapel in the Palace at Whitehall was installed in the Abbey choir and only later restored around 1866 by George Gilbert Scott. Although the pavement is today the mere shadow of its former self, no one can doubt that originally it was an extraordinary creation. Its richness of design and prominence of position alone suggest that it held an important place in the king's plans for the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. It is therefore surprising to find that the sanctuary pavement and its inscription have not yet been subjected to a thorough analytical examination.