[wptab name='Page 1']Over the weekend I went along to visit one of London’s most interesting and historic landmarks, the home of the United Kingdom’s Parliament – the Palace of Westminster.
The tours, which are given by one of London’s official ‘Blue Badge’ guides, last about one hour and fifteen minutes and take in all of the Palace of Westminster’s public areas starting in the Norman Porch, a room that sits under the Victoria Tower at the end of the building farthest away from Whitehall.
As you may or may not know, this grand neo-gothic edifice owes its existence to the catastrophic fire of 1834 (recounted in Caroline Shenton’s new book ‘The Day Parliament Burned Down’, which I reviewed recently). Only a small part of the old royal palace survived and a request went out for architects to submit their plans for a new building that would be more suited for Parliamentary business. A team comprising Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Pugin were selected, with Barry responsible for the exterior and Pugin the interior of the palace.
Building work commenced in 1840 and the new Palace of Westminster was finally completed some thirty years later, in 1870. With three miles of corridors and over a thousand rooms the Victorian designers presented a building to the country which is still fit for purpose, although on special occasions it can bulge a little at the seams – the House of Lords, for example, has 760 members but can only seat about half that number.
Back to the tour, and the Norman Porch is an appropriate starting point because it provides a good introduction to the themes that appear throughout the Palace. Here you’ll discover the first of many fine stained glass windows, which in this room are dedicated to the founders of both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Palaces – firstly Edward The Confessor who established the original Palace of Westminster in around 1045, and secondly Queen Victoria who reigned when the second building on the site took shape in the mid 1800s. There’s also a great deal of fine gilding on many of the surfaces, skylights featuring the white rose of York surmounted by a crown (which is a common feature of windows throughout the building), a large painting of an elderly Queen Victoria and also statuary. Reflecting the fact that this room is on the Lords’ side of the Palace, it contains marble busts of Prime Ministers who were, or who would go on to become, members of the House of Lords.
The next room on the tour is arguably the most impressive in the building – the Queen’s Robing Room (for the Americans, think of a huge walk-in closet about 80 feet long by about 40 feet wide with 25 foot high ceilings smothered in gold leaf and you’ll get the general idea!). This room is used solely on the occasion of the State Opening Of Parliament, and it is where the Queen dons her ceremonial robes and the Imperial State Crown before proceeding to the House of Lords Chamber. Again there are paintings, this time of a more youthful Queen Victoria alongside her consort Prince Albert and also frescoes and oak carvings which depict the Arthurian legends. The five frescoes are by Scottish artist William Dyce and feature the five ‘knightly virtues’ – apparently the dampness and quality of finish of the walls in what was, at the time, a new building meant that painting them took months and months to complete, so much so that on one occasion when asked his home address, Dyce felt he had to reply ‘the Queen’s Robing Room’. If you visit you might note one aspect of this room that isn’t really up to scratch compared to the rest of the fixtures and fittings – the Queen’s throne, which after her 60 year reign is looking surprisingly threadbare…
The next area that the tour passes into is the Royal Gallery – this room’s paintings feature Kings, Queens and their consorts (in fact if you look back as you enter the room you will note the matched pair of paintings flanking the door that show a very youthful Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh) . Another pair of huge frescoes dominate this room – one on either side dedicated to the death of Nelson at Trafalgar and the victory over the French at Waterloo, both painted by Irish artist Daniel Maclise. This room accommodates large ceremonial occasions including formal receptions, speeches and dinners, although there is an apocryphal story that when invited to speak in the room President de Gaulle of France declined and asked that another room be used. He was evidently uncomfortable with the idea of making a presentation in front of two depictions of French defeats. This room also contains what are probably the Palace of Westminster’s most gaudy statues – several old monarchs are perched here, all of them completely covered in gold.
Approaching the House of Lords chamber, the tour group is then guided into the Princes’ Chamber – here Lords usually gather to write correspondence, study papers or discuss legislation. This room is themed around the Tudor and Stuart royal dynasties, with 28 portraits of Kings and Queens lining the walls and further oak carvings depicting important scenes from the 15th to 18th centuries. Again, Queen Victoria’s image dominates the space, with a larger than life-size sculpture of her sitting on a throne against one wall. This room also features the Palace of Westminster’s newest decoration – a frieze runs around the upper portion of the chamber showing scenes from the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British naval fleet under the command of Sir Francis Drake.
The tour then moves into the Lords Chamber itself where the Lord Speaker – presiding over proceedings from a ‘wool sack’ – guides the debates on the chamber’s red benches. Made up of 92 hereditary peers, the 26 Lords Spiritual (the Bishops of the Church of England) and 640 life peers, the House of Lords spends much of its time scrutinising Government legislation. Members of the ruling political party sit to the right of the Lord Speaker, the opposition to the left with the ‘cross-bench’ peers (those who have no particular political allegiance) sitting facing the hugely ornamented throne and canopy, covered in gold, which dominates the room.
I should pause here to note that the Palace of Westminster is steeped in tradition. One of these traditions dates from an incident that occurred in 1642 when King Charles I unsuccessfully attempted to secure the arrest several members of parliament (he was to lose his head just seven years later, ushering in a short period during which the country actually became a Commonwealth). Each year on the State Opening of Parliament, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who is responsible for the security of the House of Lords, goes to the House of Commons chamber to summon the Members of Parliament to an audience with the Queen – as he approaches, the door is slammed in his face as a reminder to the reigning monarch that they should not interfere with the work of the MPs, lest they suffer the same fate as Charles I. After striking the door three times he is admitted to give his summons, however a newly minted tradition also dictates that following his announcement a Member of Parliament issues some sort of pointed criticism of the Monarch.
In recent years, this role has been taken by Dennis Skinner MP, an outspoken hard-left Labour member who clearly relishes the prospect (here’s a link to an article in the New Statesmen which lists some of his more choice epithets – I particularly like the comment about Dame Helen Mirren, who has of course played Her Majesty on the big screen). Although it doesn’t take place in the Palace, another peculiar tradition coincides with this one – to guarantee the safety of Black Rod in the Commons chamber a Member of Parliament is taken hostage for the day and deposited at Buckingham Palace (they don’t get locked in a cell or anything like that – apparently the MP is shown around and treated to a meal, so it’s considered to be quite a privilege to become the abductee).
From here, the tour passes through the Peers Lobby to Central Lobby, the vaulted space which connects all of the principal parts of the building. It gets its name from the convention that a member of public can come here and request to see the Member of Parliament that represents their constituency in order to ‘lobby’ them about an issue that concerns them. This area features some very dramatic artwork in the form of huge mosaics above each doorway depicting each of the Patron Saints of the United Kingdom – St George for England, St David for Wales, St Andrew for Scotland and St Patrick for Ireland (remembering that the Republic of Ireland was only formed in 1922, some 52 years after the Palace of Westminster was built and these mosaics installed). There’s also lots more statuary – this time the figures of several Prime Ministers.
Following the Central Lobby the tour heads towards the House of Commons chamber, pausing in the Commons lobby. Visitors will note that the decoration here is a lot more plain than the part of the building dedicated to the Lords – the gilding has disappeared, to be replaced by simple wood panelling on the walls. The most striking aspect of this space are the statues of prominent Prime Ministers, including Clement Attlee, David Lloyd George and two powerful leaders from recent history – a very stern Margaret Thatcher and a characteristically avuncular Winston Churchill. ‘There was a tradition that a statue could only be erected to a Prime Minister who had been ‘ten years dead’ – this changed with the Conservative leader of the 1980s and ’90s and now the rule is that a statue can be put up when you have been ten years out of power. Visitors will also note the damage to the archway that leads into the Commons beyond – this dates from World War II when the House of Commons chamber suffered a direct hit during a bombing raid and was virtually destroyed. In the following years the House of Commons met in the Lords chamber while the Lords assembled in the Queen’s Robing Room – reconstructed over a very short period and reopening in 1950, Churchill instructed the architects to leave a stark reminder of the War in place. Thus the damaged section of the stonework remains to this day…
The Commons chamber itself features next – it is upholstered in green (as opposed to the red of the Lords) and is very simply decorated, with benches on opposing sides of the room with the chair of the Speaker of the House of Commons in the spot where the throne is in the ‘other place’. Again the Government of the day sits to the right with the opposition and smaller parties arrayed to the left. There are further reminders of World War II within the chamber itself – the Speaker’s chair was a gift from the Australian government in acknowledgement of the sacrifices made by the Commonwealth countries during the war while the ‘dispatch boxes’, where tradition dictates that Government ministers and opposition shadow ministers should speak from, were a gift from New Zealand. If you’re curious to know what these large brass-hinged boxes contain, if you were to open them up you would discover notable religious texts – the Bible, the Old Testament and the Koran – along with a copy of the oath of allegiance that Members of Parliament have to swear if they wish to be able to enter the chamber (even though they are elected, members of the Irish Republican party, Sinn Fein, cannot enter the Commons because they refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen).
Of course the House of Commons also has its own traditions – the Speaker of the House, who maintains order during debates, would in previous centuries have been a deeply unpopular figure – in fact several Speakers were executed. In modern times this is reflected by the tradition that a newly elected Speaker is literally dragged, protesting, to their new chair, noting the reluctance with which people would have regarded the post in the past. The current Speaker is John Bercow from the Conservative party, although again tradition dictates that the Speaker puts aside his or her political allegiance when they take up the post. That doesn’t, however, extend to their spouses – Mr Bercow’s wife Sally is an outspoken activist for the opposing Labour party.
Looking around the Commons chamber you might note the upper area of the room, which contains galleries on three sides. At the rear is the ‘Strangers Gallery’ – here members of the public can come along at any time to watch and listen to debates on the floor of the House. It is now enclosed by a seven tonne bullet-proof glass screen which was installed in 2006 following an incident where a purple-coloured powder was thrown down into the chamber by a disgruntled visitor, some of which fell on the Prime Minister of the day, Tony Blair. Fortunately the substance was just dyed flour but officials decided that it was better to be safe than sorry and installed the barrier soon afterwards.
Another feature of the room that isn’t actually present during public tours is the mace – this large ceremonial object, dating from the 18th century, is processed into the chamber and laid at the centre before the start of business each day as a representation of the authority of the Sovereign. Effectively a ‘sacred’ object, tradition dictates that it should not be touched by Members of Parliament. On several occasions people have made a point of ignoring this rule – most notably a young Michael Heseltine (subsequently a Minister in several Conservative cabinets, a Deputy Prime Minister and presently an adviser to the Conservative government in the House of Lords) who picked up the mace and waved it about during a particularly heated debate, an act for which he was severely censured.
The penultimate area on the tour is St Stephen’s Hall which leads away from the Central Lobby towards the public entrance to the Palace of Westminster off Parliament Square. Previously this was the site of the St Stephen’s chapel, which was given to Parliament by Edward VI as a space where MPs could debate. Sitting in opposing choir stalls they would discuss legislation and the issues of the day, and Sir Charles Barry’s unique design for the House of Commons chamber was a deliberate homage to this earlier debating chamber.
The final stop on a tour of the Palace of Westminster is the building’s oldest and largest section, Westminster Hall, which dates in part from 1097. With it’s distinct hammerbeam roof, this huge space has several uses today. Because of its size it is often used for speeches where all members of the Lords and the Commons wish to gather – the Queen has addressed the whole of Parliament here on several occasions (brass plaques on the floor indicate the spot from where she has spoken on all of her Jubilees for example) as have several other heads of state. Nelson Mandela made a speech here soon after he was elected as President of South Africa and it also the site of two firsts – Barack Obama used Westminster Hall to make the first address by a US President to the assembled British Parliament and Benedict XVI was the first Pope to speak here.
Visitors to Westminster Hall also get a special visual treat at the moment – due to be installed in the autumn, a beautiful stained glass window is currently on display which is a gift from both Houses to the Queen on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, and which carries a large representation of the royal coat of arms.
Guided tours of the Palace of Westminster take place throughout the day every Saturday and during Parliamentary recesses (holiday periods when the Houses do not have sittings) and I think it is fair to say that I have only just touched on the things that you will learn if you go along on a tour – I can guarantee that you will leave with your head absolutely brimming with new facts!
Tickets are currently priced at £15 per adult (with concessions for senior citizens, students and members of the armed forces). You can purchase tickets by telephone on 0844 8471672 or online here, and you can also buy tickets on the day from the ticket office in the white building adjacent to the Jewel Tower opposite the Palace. Given the popularity of the tours I would recommend booking advance to ensure that you can get a place at a time that is convenient for you, particularly if you’re only planning a short break in London.
For UK citizens it is also possible to visit Parliament by making a request via your constituency MP – these are free of charge but obviously are more complex to arrange. The Parliamentary website has more information on how to go about this.
Parliament has very recently launched a new Twitter account, specific to the tour programme, which you can find here – follow it for information on tour bookings and snippets of information about Parliament’s history.
About Pete Stean
