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Interior view of the south cloister; 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 small-scale 19th- and early 20th-century excavations, permits a reconstruction of the completed church as a near-double of the church of Notre-Dame, Jumièges abbey, in Normandy, although Westminster Abbey was longer than any French church of the period. Edward's upbringing in Normandy helps explain the urge to embark on a total rebuilding as well as the use of the Norman Romanesque style not previously employed in England. Edward's work included an apsed and vaulted chapter house. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/14/2008)