Tony Willoughby

Westminster Abbey - The Chapel of St Edmund Tony Willoughby

The Chapel of St Edmund is one of the last chapels on the visitor route around the Abbey and does not feature on the Audio Guide. It is easy to pass by without entering. Indeed, it is probably the least visited of all the major chapels open to the public. At this stage of a tour most visitors will be keen to take in Poets' Corner and the not-to-be-missed Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries. Nonetheless, the Chapel contains an interesting collection of 'residents', the first arrival being King Henry III's half-brother, William de Valence in 1296 and the last being Lord Lytton, the popular Victorian novelist, who died in 1837. The Dean of the time thought it appropriate that he be buried here alongside Sir Humphrey Bourchier, rather than in the South Transept with Charles Dickens and the other novelists, because Sir Humphrey, a casualty of the Wars of the Roses, featured as a character in one of Lytton's novels.