As we approach Christmas 2025, it has been announced that His Majesty The King will deliver his annual broadcast from the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey.
Hawksmore work and great door of Westminster Abbey
This choice follows his recent pattern of filming in locations with specific symbolic weight, moving this year from the medical associations of 2024’s Fitzrovia Chapel to a site that is a cornerstone of the nation’s spiritual and monarchical history.
The Abbey has signaled that the setting was chosen to reflect the theme of pilgrimage. In their own voice, the Abbey highlights its role as a major church for pilgrims who come to honor the life and legacy of Edward the Confessor, the Saxon royal saint whose shrine remains at the Abbey’s heart.
Tomb of Edward the Confessor
The King will speak from within the Henry VII Lady Chapel—a site of spectacular medieval architecture that stands where Henry III famously laid the first foundation stone of the earlier Lady Chapel in 1220. Standing among the tombs of 15 monarchs, including Elizabeth I and Charles II, the King is expected to address the “pilgrimage of life” and the lessons learned through times of challenge and recovery.
At Soulton Hall, we have followed the announcement from the Abbey with interest, noting the emphasis on the legacy of Saxon royal saints and the practice of pilgrimage. These are themes that have also been present in our own work this year.
In 2025, Soulton Hall marked the completion of a multi-year project to attend to the complex legacy of our 16th-century builder, Sir Rowland Hill.
This culminated in an important ecumenical service for St. Erkenwald—the Saxon “Light of London,” a figure of royal blood who, like Edward the Confessor, was a focal point of ancient devotion. Our research and conservation work suggest that Hill, while overseeing the dismantling of Old St. Paul’s, sought to “responsibly accommodate” and preserve the memory of Erkenwald’s shrine within the geometry and fabric of this house.
This year also saw the conservation of our Tudor Prayer Room and the first public access to that space.
Tudor Prayer Room in Soulton Hall
This space was designed for reflection and to support the quiet preservation of a heritage that was, in its own time, under threat of iconoclasm.
The King’s focus on the universal “pilgrimage” also meets a wider global moment. Today, as reports confirm Pope Leo XIV’s urgent call for a 24-hour global truce on Christmas Day, we are reminded that these ideas of peace and the human journey belong to everyone.
Whether in the grandeur of the Abbey or the quiet codes of a Shropshire manor, the message of 2025 looking into 2026 must be one of reconciliation: by looking back at our shared roots, may we find a more stable path for the journey ahead.
