Westminster

This name has been from time immemorial given to the district of which the ancient fane tautologically styled “Westminster Abbey” is the centre. One does not speak of “York Minster Abbey” or “Lincoln Minster Abbey.” A minster is a great church in connection with a monastery. Since the Reformation the abbeys have been swept away, the Minsters remain. The earliest mention of “the West Minster” occurs in a Saxon charter of 785, in contradistinction to “the East Minster” that stood in those days somewhere on Tower Hill. All trace of this has been lost, yet it is po ible that St Katherine’s Hospital, now displaced by the docks of the same name, grew out of it.