Worship at the Abbey

A Service to Celebrate the Life of Florence Nightingale

11th May 2011 at 6:30 pm

Florence Nightingale’s life and work remembered

Wednesday 11 May 2011 at 6.30 pm

Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra, Patron, The Florence Nightingale Foundation, attended the annual commemoration service. The service was held to celebrate nursing and midwifery and all staff, both qualified and unqualified, working in these services.

Florence Nightingale’s life and work was commemorated at the special service on 11 May at 6.15 pm. Nurses, midwives, health visitors, and government ministers were amongst those attending the service which is held annually at Westminster Abbey.

The Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, led the service and the Address was given by Mr David Chapman.

A lamp—symbolic of Florence Nightingale—was taken from the Florence Nightingale Chapel during the service and escorted by a procession of nurses to the Dean who placed it on the High Altar.

This year the Lamp was carried by a Scholar of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and it was escorted by student nurses and midwives from Queen’s and Ulster University Schools of Nursing in Northern Ireland and the Open University. 

The Florence Nightingale Chapel was open to visit before the service. Formerly the Nurses’ Chapel, it was rededicated in May 2010 in the centennial year of Florence Nightingale’s death. The Chapel in the Abbey’s North Ambulatory, which since 1532 has been the chantry chapel of Abbot John Islip and since the Second World War has been dedicated to the Nurses and Midwives of the Commonwealth who gave their lives in that war, was dedicated in honour of Florence Nightingale and thus of all nurses and those in allied professions.

Website: The Florence Nightingale Foundation
Telephone: 020 7730 3030