I have been to Westminster Abbey twice and both visits were for memorial services; Lord Hailsham and Dame Joan Sutherland. A few days ago I paid a third visit, as a tourist.
There are long queues to get in if you haven’t booked a ticket online. Thank you, Ingy, for your forward thinking. It was rather crowded but there were plenty of attendants willing to answer questions. I elicited information such as that the first cremation in the UK was in 1860. This is probably incorrect as Wiki says 1885. (It was not until 1982 that there was a crematorium in the Irish Republic.)
There is no shortage of tombs and memorials in the Abbey but I wanted to see one in particular; Thomas Cochrane, the model for Jack Aubrey in Patrick OBrian’s novels. The inscription on his tombstone reads:
“HERE RESTS IN HIS 85th YEAR THOMAS COCHRANE TENTH EARL OF DUNDONALD BARON COCHRANE OF DUNDONALD OF PAISLEY AND OF OCHILTREE IN THE PEERAGE OF SCOTLAND MARQUESS OF MARANHAM IN THE EMPIRE OF BRAZIL G.C.B. AND ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET WHO BY THE CONFIDENCE WHICH HIS GENIUS HIS SCIENCE AND EXTRAORDINARY DARING INSPIRED, BY HIS HEROIC EXERTIONS IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM AND HIS SPLENDID SERVICES ALIKE TO HIS OWN COUNTRY GREECE BRAZIL CHILI AND PERU ACHIEVED A NAME ILLUSTRIOUS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD FOR COURAGE PATRIOTISM AND CHIVALRY. BORN DEC 14th 1775. DIED OCT. 31st 1860”
I was foxed by the initials GCB, which I now know stand for Knight Grand Cross (natch). This in popular parlance is a Knight of the Bath. The Order uses the Lady Chapel in the Abbey where the insignia of Knights who have been installed (there is a waiting list) and the brass stall plates for all members of the order are displayed. Except one is missing, the one for Thomas Cochrane. He was caught up in a financial scandal and his membership of the Order was revoked in 1814, so his stall plate was removed. When he was re-instated in 1847 it was discovered that someone had carved his (Cochrane’s) name into the back of the oak stall where the stall plate had been and it was decided to keep the carving and not the brass plate. Cochrane, so unconventional in life, keeps this up in perpetuity.
Here are the Knights processing into the Abbey in 1749, painted by Canaletto. (This was a picture question on University Challenge this year and the team were unable to identify the building.)
Cochrane the Dauntless, by David Cordingly, is an excellent biography of this most unusual man whose real-life exploits manage to outdo even those of his fictional alter ego, Jack Aubrey.
As I was leaving the Abbey I noticed this manhole cover in the cloisters.
