Contents

Foreword by The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster
Acknowledgements
1	Westminster Abbey: the Crossing
2	Edward the Confessor’s Crossing Tower and Lantern
3	Henry III’s Unfinished Crossing Tower
	What form of Crossing Tower was envisaged?
	Existing Evidence
	How much of the Lantern Tower was actually built?
	Gaining Access to the Lantern Stage
4	The Late Medieval Stone and Timber Lantern
	The Evidence of the Drawing in the Islip Roll
	Access to the Lantern Stage
5	The Disappearance of the Medieval Lantern
	The Fate of the Lantern Tower
	Early Views of the Abbey
	The Earliest Architects’ Drawings
6	Sir Christopher Wren’s Ambitious Tower and Spire
	The First Report on the Fabric, 1713
	Structural Strengthening to Support a Tower
	William Dickinson’s Contribution
7	Begun, but still Incomplete: Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Crossing Tower and Spire
	The Hawksmoor Drawings
	Repairing the Damaged Medieval Crossing
	Hawksmoor’s Model of the Crossing
	Construction of the New Lantern Tower Begins
	Work Stops for the Coronation, 1727
	Executing Hawksmoor’s Final Design
	Bowed Legs and Rent Fabric
	The Crucial Evidence of Pietro Fabris
	The Mysterious Woodperry House Painting
8	James Wyatt and the Fire of 1803
	The Lantern Burns, July 1803
	Wyatt’s Reconstruction
9	Sir George Gilbert Scott and ‘some ameliorations in the Lantern’
10	The Early Twentieth Century, World War II, and the Aftermath
	Fire-Bombed, May 1941
	Patching up the Lantern
	Dykes Bower and the Crossing Tower: An Unfulfilled Desire?
11	New Surveys of the Crossing and Lantern, 2009–10
12	Summary and Conclusions
Appendix: Function and Variety in Early Crossing Towers and their Superstructures by Richard Gem
	Late Antiquity
	The Early Middle Ages
	The Later Middle Ages
	Conclusions
Notes and References
Index