How King Edward III might stop the Chinese mega-embassy
Protest in February outside Royal Mint Court, the proposed setting for China's UK embassy (Contributor: orlando britain)
5 min read
Of all the names linked to the Chinese mega-embassy saga, Edward III is an unlikely late entrant.
Bear with me. In 1360, during the Hundred Years War, the English army was caught in a violent storm near Chartres. Freezing hail and rain lashed the troops so fiercely that around 1,000 men and countless horses died; some soldiers were even struck by lightning. Seeing the calamity as divine retribution, Edward sued for peace and vowed to build a chapel in honour of the Virgin Mary.
That chapel, Our Lady of Graces, was completed in 1350. Today, its ruins lie beneath Royal Mint Court, land now owned by the Chinese government and impatiently awaiting Angela Rayner’s approval to redevelop the site into a colossal embassy.
Fast forward two centuries. By 1539, Henry VIII’s destruction of monastic England was in full swing. 'No news but the abbeys shall be down,' wrote Thomas Warley to Lady Lisle in 1536. Henry Moore, last abbot of St Mary Graces, then the third-wealthiest Cistercian abbey in England, was told to surrender the abbey to the Crown or face the consequences.
And what of the consequences? Moore would have known of Abbot Richard Whiting of Glastonbury, who resisted forfeiture and was made an example of: dragged up the Tor, hung, drawn, and quartered; his head nailed above the abbey gate, his limbs scattered across Somerset.
Moore chose to capitulate. Our Lady of Graces declined, then was demolished. The site became the Royal Mint, and after its closure, Royal Mint Court, which is now in Chinese hands.
It goes without saying this is a site of national importance. Westminster has its abbey - this was London’s “Eastminster”. Edward III was involved in both, completing the former, and commissioning the latter.
One chronicler called the demise of St Mary Graces “a late loss”, and a place that echoed with “early modern nostalgia”, the sound of a spiritual world dismantled by crown and axe.
Much of that history remains under Royal Mint Court. Excavations in the 1980s uncovered hundreds of skeletons, a plague pit and other evidence proving the abbey is an architectural gem.
Now, nearly 500 years later, we stand on the brink of losing this heritage to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations makes diplomatic land inviolable. Without the head of mission’s consent, the host nation can’t enter, even to extinguish a raging fire. Once inside embassy grounds, these ruins, English treasures, would in practice be Chinese.
In January 2025, the UK government finally saw the problem. The Home and Foreign Secretaries wrote to the Planning Inspector reviewing China’s development bid, insisting that public access to the ruins must be secured by building a wall to keep visitors safe. Otherwise, they warned, people might become ill (or, reading between the lines, detained by the Chinese), and the UK would require permission to act.
The Chinese side rejected the wall ideal summarily. “No plans,” a rather-pleased-with-himself King’s Counsel smirked during the planning hearing. Perhaps a touch of hubris from the world’s second most powerful nation?
In any event, it seems to have been enough to invoke the spiritual ire of the Edward and holy monks of Eastminster. Unexpectedly, last week officials in Angela Rayner’s department gave China until 20 August to explain what progress has been made on securing access to the ruins.
Nearly all media reports have neglected this important development in favour of the mysterious redaction in the development drawings, about which Rayner’s department has rightly demanded an explanation. But this seemingly insignificant detail - access to the ruined Cistercian abbey - could actually be the thing that finally kills off the mega-embassy plan.
20 August is a brutally short deadline. Anyone familiar with Beijing’s style knows that consequential decisions usually take at least five weeks. Authoritarian bureaucracies have their drawbacks, folks.
Worse for Beijing, Rayner can only pronounce on the existing application. There are no changes allowed at this stage. And that application offers no hint of a solution to the abbey problem. Realising the bind, the Chinese side scrambled to suggest a “compromise”: they would grant “permanent permission” for Metropolitan Police officers to accompany visitors inside embassy grounds.
This is unworkable. “Permanent permission” is a legal fiction, and it flatly contradicts diplomatic inviolability. Besides, dissidents already receive letters threatening to “take them to the embassy”. The idea that the government would knowingly send anyone, let alone sanctioned MPs and peers, or those named in CCP show trials - including me - to run a CCP gauntlet in order to visit their heritage is absurd and unacceptable.
So, without a credible compromise, the UK must choose: surrender the ruins to Chinese control, or stand firm on the condition for safe public access. I have no confidence that the CCP would conserve the site, permit further excavation, or keep any access promise beyond using it as a bargaining chip.
Historic England, our most prominent historians, Christian leaders and Westminster should be up in arms. Our politicians do not own our heritage. We do. We have a duty to protect it and hand it on, not trade it away to avoid a diplomatic quarrel.
This dispute has dragged on long enough. Beijing’s plan jeopardises our national security, our liberties, relationships with important allies and our heritage. “Please God and St George”, Edward is credited to have said. The government should listen to him and say no to the mega-embassy.
