Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United Kingdom`s most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs. The building itself was a Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539. Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral. Since 1560, the building is no longer an abbey or a cathedral, having instead the status of a Church of England `Royal Peculiar`ââ¬âa church responsible directly to the sovereign. According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site then known as Thorn Ey Thorn Island in the seventh century, at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245, on the orders of King Henry III.[4] Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have been in Westminster Abbey.[4][5] There have been at least 16 royal weddings at the abbey since 1100. Two were of reigning monarchs Henry I and Richard II, although, before 1919, there had been none for some 500 years.
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