Poets' Corner

Poets’ Corner occupies the south transept of Westminster Abbey, a great Gothic church beside the Thames in London. It began in 1400 when Geoffrey Chaucer was buried there, not chiefly as a poet but as Clerk of Works at the Palace of Westminster. Over the centuries the tradition grew of honouring writers with tombs, slabs and tablets. Some were interred whole, others have ashes beneath the floor, and a few were cremated and then buried. The area also contains memorials to deans and canons of the Abbey, and the grave of Thomas Parr, said to have lived 152 years. The place is worth visiting for the names it carries. William Shakespeare, though buried at Stratford, received a monument here in 1740. The Brontë sisters share a single stone slab, unveiled in 1947 after the Second World War. Sixteen First World War poets are inscribed on a slate slab, quoting Wilfred Owen’s words about the pity of war. Rudyard Kipling’s ashes were placed here in 1936, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s name was added to the stained glass window in 2010. Visitors find floor slabs with carved names, hanging tablets on the walls, and busts set in niches. A stained glass window holds six inscribed panes, with space for fourteen more. The grave of Ben Jonson lies nearby in the nave, marked by an upright slab. Paintings discovered behind earlier monuments led to some memorials being moved. Each memorial records a life given to letters, set within the soaring arches of the Abbey’s southern transept.