Add to ORKGSouth transept and Chapter House, frontal view, from the west, with the Henry VII Chapel at the right; The abbey may have been founded in the early 7th century. It certainly existed by the late 8th, although its architectural history is unknown before the rebuilding undertaken by King Edward the Confessor probably in the late 1040s, when he apparently also began the palace. The former Benedictine, now collegiate, church contains an immense quantity of monumental sculpture from the Middle Ages onwards, as well as important medieval paintings. The anonymous life of St Edward the Confessor, written 1065-1067, gives a long description of the parts of the abbey that existed when Edward died in January 1066. This, together with evidence from smal...