Tony Willoughby

Westminsters in and around Westminster Abbey Tony Willoughby

Of the 3000+ people buried and/or memorialised in Westminster Abbey, over 230 are former pupils of Westminster School, the successor to the monastery school, which was seamlessly reconstituted by a foundation of King Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monastery in 1540 and then re-founded in 1560 by his daughter Queen Elizabeth I as part of her foundation of the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster (also known as "Westminster Abbey").

The purpose of this booklet is a very narrow one, namely to identify from the available records the whereabouts of as many as possibly of those former pupils' marked graves and memorials. The reader is taken on a tour of those sites starting in St Margaret's churchyard, moving into St Margaret's itself and then across to the Abbey, following the current visitor tour route from the North Transept, up the North Choir Aisle into the Nave, back down the South Choir Aisle into the Crossing and around the Ambulatory chapels (including Henry VII's Chapel), into the South Transept and exiting into the Cloisters via the East Cloister door and finishing up in the Chapter House.