And there is Westminster Abbey.

I once spent a Sunday in Westminster Abbey. Except for services, it’s closed on Sundays but I went with photographer Malcolm Crowthers who has been conducting a love affair with the Abbey for a very long time. He had permission to be there, indeed was welcomed as a good friend. It was one of the most memorable days of my life. The building was deserted except for a verger. Malcolm took me everywhere – he knew every nook and cranny. We poked about under seats looking for Green Men, climbed over tombs to examine hidden treasures, sat in the Pyx Chamber marvelling at the exquisite tiles and we generally rejoiced in the silence, the peace and the astonishing beauty of the clutter which is Westminster Abbey because it is one of the most cluttered places imaginable. Tombs, memorials, tiles, paintings, carvings, kings, queens, princes, lords and ladies, poets, musicians, painters, politicians, scientists – all clustered together in amiable chaos – a chaos which has been developing for hundreds of years.

Malcolm Crowthers illustrated a book about the Abbey a few years ago and continued afterwards to take pictures there whenever the opportunity arose. Eventually staff changes and security concerns eroded the love affair the Abbey was having with him although it didn't change the way he felt about the Abbey. The result of his years of freedom is a bizarre collection of transparencies which now nestle in the files at Collections. Amongst the usual pictures are many which are unusual, mostly because nobody knows they are there. How about a blue porcupine, Dick Whittington’s cat, an extraordinary fish-eye of the roof, a buttress of a dog being stung by a bee, Queen Elizabeth I wearing a tacky little crown which was stolen an hour after it was ceremoniously installed, an astonishing sunrise unexpectedly illuminating the Unknown Warriors Tomb and the tomb strewn with poppies on Remembrance Sunday. Everything is done with affection and respect.

Westminster Abbey is covered with detail some of which is in the files and a lot of which is on line, from fleur-de-lis to Tudor roses, Green Men to Censing Angels, weepers, bosses, greyhounds, Halley’s comet, paintings, ancient doors. Meandering through his pictures will never be as good as spending Sunday in the deserted Abbey but it’s a pleasure nevertheless. And of course there are all the usual exteriors as well. Westminster Abbey