Burials and memorials in Westminster Abbey
[2] Since the 18th century, it has become a prestigious honour for any British person to be buried or commemorated in the abbey, a practice much boosted by the lavish funeral and monument of Sir Isaac Newton, who died in 1727.
[4] Henry III rebuilt Westminster Abbey in honour of the Royal Saint Edward the Confessor, whose relics were placed in a shrine in the sanctuary and now lie in a burial vault beneath the 1268 Cosmati mosaic pavement, in front of the high altar.
The practice of burying national figures in the abbey began under Oliver Cromwell with the burial of Admiral Robert Blake, in 1657.
He invited popular preachers to draw in large congregations, and attracted crowds by arranging for celebrities of the day to be buried in the abbey, such as the writer Charles Dickens, the explorer David Livingstone, and the scientist Charles Darwin — even when those people had expressed wishes to be buried elsewhere.
[6] By 1900, so many prominent figures were buried in the abbey that the writer William Morris called it a "National Valhalla".
[10] The ashes of physicist Stephen Hawking were interred in the abbey on 15 June 2018, near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.
[11][12] The memorial stone, bearing the inscription 'Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942–2018', includes a form of the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy equation relating to black holes.
[12] In the floor just inside the great west door, in the centre of the nave, is the tomb of The Unknown Warrior, an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War.
Over the course of several days, the body was brought to Westminster Abbey, and at each of the places the cortège rested, an Eleanor cross was erected in memory.
Although not a royal burial, the funeral of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell took place at the abbey in 1658 with full honours normally only given to monarchs.
In November 1869, at the request of the Dean of Westminster and with the approval of Queen Victoria, the philanthropist George Peabody was given a temporary burial in the abbey, but was later moved and buried in Salem, Massachusetts.
