Westminster before urbanisation. The Roman road (modernOxford Street) is shown at top running west.
Thorney Island lay between the arms of the formerRiver Tyburn at its confluence with the Thames, while the western boundary with Chelsea was formed by the similarly lostRiver Westbourne.[2] The line of the river still forms (with very slight revisions) the boundaries of the modern borough with theRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Parishes and Places of the City and Liberty of Westminster. The lowerWestbourne formed part of the western boundary, andOxford Street the north.
Further north, away from the river mouth, Westminster included land on both sides of the Westbourne, notablyKnightsbridge (including the parts of Hyde Park west of theSerpentine lake (originally formed by damming the river) and most of Kensington Gardens).
The former City of Westminster merged with the neighbouring boroughs ofPaddington andMarylebone in 1965 to form a larger modern borough. These neighbouring areas (except for a small area of Paddington in part of Kensington Gardens), lie north ofOxford Street and its westward continuation, Bayswater Road.
The development of the area began with the establishment ofWestminster Abbey on a site then calledThorney Island. The site may have been chosen because of thenatural ford which is thought to have carriedWatling Street over theThames in the vicinity.[3] The wider district became known as Westminster in reference to the church.
The legendary origin[4] is that in the early 7th century, a local fisherman named Edric (or Aldrich) ferried a stranger in tattered foreign clothing over the Thames toThorney Island. It was a miraculous appearance ofSt Peter, a fisherman himself, coming to the island toconsecrate the newly built church, which later developed intoWestminster Abbey. He rewarded Edric with a bountiful catch when he next dropped his nets. Edric was instructed to present theking andSt. Mellitus, Bishop of London, with a salmon and various proofs that the consecration had already occurred. Every year on 29 June, St Peter's Day, theWorshipful Company of Fishmongers presents the Abbey with a salmon in memory of this event.[5]
A charter of 785, possibly a forgery, grants land tothe needy people of God in Thorney, in the dreadful spot which is called Westminster. The text suggests a pre-existing monastic community who chose to live in a very challenging location.
The recorded origins of the Abbey (rather than a less important religious site) date to the 960s or early 970s, whenSaint Dunstan andKing Edgar installed a community ofBenedictinemonks on the site.[6]
Between 1042 and 1052, KingEdward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. It was the first church in England built in theRomanesque style. The building was completed around 1060 and was consecrated on 28 December 1065, only a week before Edward's death on 5 January 1066.[7] A week later, he was buried in the church; and, nine years later, his wifeEdith was buried alongside him.[8] His successor,Harold II, was probably crowned in the abbey, although the first documented coronation is that ofWilliam the Conqueror later the same year.[9]
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacentPalace of Westminster, is in theBayeux Tapestry. Some of the lower parts of the monastic dormitory, an extension of the south transept, survive in the Norman Undercroft of the Great School, including a door said to come from the previousSaxon abbey. Increased endowments supported a community that increased from a dozen monks in Dunstan's original foundation, up to a maximum of about eighty monks.[10]
The ancient parish wasSt Margaret; after 1727 this became the civil parish of 'St Margaret and St John', the latter a new church required for the increasing population. The area around Westminster Abbey formed the extra-parochialClose of the Collegiate Church of St Peter. Like many large parishes, Westminster was divided into smaller units calledHamlets (meaning a territorial sub-division, rather than a small village). These would later become independent daughter parishes.
Under local government reforms in 1889, the area fell within the newly createdCounty of London, and the local government of Westminster was further reformed in 1900, when the court of burgesses and the parish vestries were abolished and replaced by theMetropolitan Borough of Westminster. The borough was givencity status at the same time, allowing it to be known as theCity of Westminster and its council asWestminster City Council.
From about 1200 thePalace of Westminster, near the abbey, became the principal royal residence, a transition marked by the transfer of royal treasury and financial records to Westminster fromWinchester. Later the palace housed the developingParliament andEngland's law courts. Thus, London developed two focal points: theCity of London (financial/economic) and Westminster (political and cultural).
The settlement grew up around the palace and abbey, as a service area for them. The parish church,St Margaret's Westminster served the wider community of the parish; the servants of the palace and abbey as well as the rural population and those associated with the high status homes developing on the road from the city. The area became larger and in theGeorgian period became connected through urbanribbon development with the City along the Strand.
Henry VIII'sReformation in the early 16th century abolished the abbey and established a cathedral – thus the parish ranked as a "City", although it was only a fraction of the size of the City of London and the Borough ofSouthwark at that time.
Indeed, the cathedral and diocesan status of the church lasted only from 1539 to 1556, but the "city" status remained for a mere parish within Middlesex. As such it is first known to have had two Members of Parliament in 1545 as a newParliamentary Borough, centuries after the City of London and Southwark were enfranchised.[13]
Part ofCharles Booth'spoverty map showing Westminster in 1889. The colours of the streets represent the economic class of the residents: Yellow ("Upper-middle and Upper classes, Wealthy"), red ("Lower middle class – Well-to-do middle class"), pink ("Fairly comfortable good ordinary earnings"), blue ("Intermittent or casual earnings"), and black ("lowest class occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals"). Booth coloured Victoria Street, with its new shops and flats, yellow. The model dwellings built by thePeabody Trust on the side streets off Victoria Street appear as pink and grey, signalling modest respectability, while the black and blue streets represent the remaining slum areas housing the poorest.[15]
Charles Booth'spoverty map showing Westminster in 1889 recorded the full range of income- and capital-brackets living in adjacent streets within the area; its central western area had become (by 1850) (the) Devil's Acre in the southern flood-channel ravine of theRiver Tyburn, yet Victoria Street and other small streets and squares had the highest colouring of social class in London: yellow/gold. Westminster has shed the abject poverty with the clearance of thisslum and with drainage improvement, but there is a typicalCentral London property distinction within the area which is very acute, epitomised by grandiose 21st-century developments, architectural high-pointlisted buildings[16] and nearbysocial housing (mostly non-council housing) buildings of thePeabody Trust founded by philanthropistGeorge Peabody.
Given the focus on Westminster in English and British public life over centuries, the name "Westminster" is casually used as ametonym for the UK Parliament and for the political community of the United Kingdom generally. (Thecivil service is similarly referred to using the name of the northern sub-neighbourhood which it inhabits, "Whitehall".) "Westminster" is consequently also used in reference to theWestminster system, the parliamentary model of democratic government that has evolved in the United Kingdom and for those other nations, particularly in theCommonwealth of Nations and for other parts of the formerBritish Empire that adopted it.
The term "Westminster Village", sometimes used in the context of British politics, does not refer to a geographical area at all; employed especially in the phrase "Westminster Village gossip", it denotes a supposedly close social circle of members of parliament, political journalists, so-calledspin-doctors and others connected to events in the Palace of Westminster and in Government ministries.
The area has a substantial residential population. By the 20th century Westminster saw rising numbers of residentialapartments with wealthy inhabitants. Hotels, large Victorian homes and barracks exist near toBuckingham Palace.
^Boundary of Westminster and Chelsea 'The parish of Chelsea: Introduction', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 12, Chelsea, ed. Patricia E C Croot (London, 2004), pp. 1–2. British History Onlinehttp://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol12/pp1-2 [accessed 19 December 2020].
^"Loftie's Historic London (review)".The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art.63 (1, 634): 271. 19 February 1887. Retrieved21 October 2015.
^M.R.P. (1981). "Constituencies:Westminster-Borough"The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, London: Boydell and Brewer.History of Parliament website Retrieved 12 July 2023.
Manchee, W. H. (1924),The Westminster City Fathers (the Burgess Court of Westminster) 1585–1901: Being some account of their powers and domestic rule of the City prior to its incorporation in 1901; with a foreword by Walter G. Bell and 36 illustrations which relate to documents (some pull-outs) and artefacts. London: John Lane (The Bodley Head).
Davies, E. A. (1952),An Account of the Formation and Early Years of The Westminster Fire Office; (Includes black-and-white photographic plates with a colourfrontispiece of 'A Waterman' and a foreword by Major K. M. Beaumont. London: Country Life Limited for the Westminster Fire Office.
