Palace of Westminster

• 1. Introduction

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  The Palace of Westminster holds a bell that Tsar Nicholas I once called part of "a dream in stone". Perched beside the River Thames in London, the building most people know as the Houses of Parliament has been a meeting place for lawmakers since the 13th century, a royal residence before that, and the target of plotters, bombers, and protesters across a thousand years of turbulent history. How did a medieval king's home become the symbol of an entire system of government? Why did two great fires shape the building the world now recognises? And what does the fate of the stonework on its towers tell us about the cost of ambition? These are the threads the story of Westminster pulls at.

• 2. From Royal Palace to Parliament

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  Edward the Confessor built a palace on the Westminster site around 1045, and from that point the location became one of the fixed points of English political life. The site may even have been used by Cnut during his reign from 1016 to 1035, though what Edward constructed was the foundation of something lasting. The predecessor of Parliament, the Curia Regis, met in Westminster Hall whenever the king was in residence, and the body known as the Model Parliament, considered the first Parliament of England, met at the palace in 1295.

  For centuries the palace had no purpose-built chambers for its lawmakers. The Commons made use of St Stephen's Chapel in the sixteenth century, while the Lords occupied the Painted Chamber and later the White Chamber. Space became a persistent problem as Parliament's workload grew, prompting a string of alterations from the 18th century onward, including new storage and committee rooms by John Vardy completed in 1770, a new Speaker's residence completed in 1795, and significant work by James Wyatt completed in 1801.

  The break between the palace as royal home and the palace as legislative seat came in 1512, when a fire destroyed the royal apartments during the early reign of Henry VIII. Henry formally departed in 1534 for the neighbouring Palace of Whitehall, formerly York Place, which he had seized from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Westminster remained a royal palace in name, but its primary occupants from that moment forward were Parliament and the courts of law.

• 3. The Fire of 1834

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  On the 16th of October 1834, a fire broke out in the palace after an overheated stove used to destroy the Exchequer's stockpile of tally sticks set fire to the House of Lords Chamber. The blaze consumed both Houses of Parliament along with most of the other buildings in the complex. Westminster Hall survived thanks to firefighting efforts and a fortunate change in wind direction. The Jewel Tower and the undercroft, cloisters, and chapter house of St Stephen's Chapel were the only other parts of the palace to make it through.

  William IV offered the nearly completed Buckingham Palace to Parliament in the aftermath, hoping to be rid of a residence he disliked. Parliament rejected it as unsuitable for legislative use. The Painted Chamber and White Chamber were hastily repaired for temporary sittings, and in 1835 the King permitted Parliament to draw up plans for its permanent accommodation.

  Each house formed a committee, and the winning design came from the architect Charles Barry, who chose a Perpendicular Gothic Revival style. Barry was trained as a classical architect and relied heavily on Augustus Pugin to handle the Gothic details. Pugin later expressed his dissatisfaction with how the collaboration turned out, famously remarking: "All Grecian, sir; Tudor details on a classic body." Construction began in 1840 and lasted thirty years, enduring delays, cost overruns, and the deaths of both Barry and Pugin before it was done.

• 4. Towers and Stonework

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  In 1839 Charles Barry toured Britain with a committee that included two leading geologists and a stonecarver, inspecting quarries and buildings to find the right material for the new palace. From a list of 102 candidates, two quarries were selected, with most of the stone coming from Anston in South Yorkshire. The committee chose Anston because it was cheaper and, in the words recorded at the time, "could be supplied in blocks up to four feet thick and lent itself to elaborate carving." Transport was a crucial factor too: stone arrived via the Chesterfield Canal, the North Sea, and the rivers Trent and Thames.

  The Anston limestone began to decay from pollution and poor quality within years of use; problems were visible as early as 1849, though nothing was done for the rest of the 19th century. By the 1910s the deterioration forced action, and in 1928 it was decided to switch to Clipsham stone, a honey-coloured limestone from Rutland. Work began in the 1930s, was halted by the Second World War, and was completed only in the 1950s. Pollution struck again by the 1960s, and a full stone conservation and restoration programme for the external elevations and towers ran from 1981 to 1994.

  The palace has three principal towers. The tallest is the 98.5 m Victoria Tower at the south-western corner, which upon its completion in 1858 was the tallest secular building in the world. Its base holds the Sovereign's Entrance, decorated with statues of Saints George, Andrew and Patrick along with Queen Victoria, and above it the Parliamentary Archives occupy 8.8 km of steel shelving across 12 floors, holding every Act of Parliament since 1497 as well as the original Bill of Rights and the death warrant of King Charles I. At 96 m, the Elizabeth Tower - commonly known by the bell it houses - is only slightly shorter, while the octagonal Central Tower at 91 m was added at the insistence of Dr. David Boswell Reid, who wanted it as a chimney for the ventilation of the building. The Central Tower completely failed in that purpose.

• 5. Big Ben and the Great Clock

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  The Elizabeth Tower was called the Clock Tower until 2012, when it was renamed to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Augustus Pugin designed it, though the tower was built after his death. The Great Clock inside uses the original mechanism built by Edward John Dent to designs by amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, and it has remained reliable since it entered service in 1859, striking the hour to within a second of the time.

  Four dials each measuring 7 m in diameter face outward from the tower, made of milk glass and lit from behind at night. The hour hand is 2.7 m long and the minute hand extends to 4.3 m. Five bells hang in the belfry above the clock; the four smaller quarter bells strike the Westminster Chimes every fifteen minutes, while the Great Bell strikes the hours. That bell, officially named the Great Bell but universally called Big Ben - a nickname of uncertain origins that has migrated over time to the whole tower - carries a distinctive sound due to a crack that developed during its lifetime. It is the third-heaviest bell in Britain, weighing 13.8 tonnes.

  At the very top of the tower is the Ayrton Light, lit whenever either House of Parliament is sitting after dark. It was installed in 1885 at the request of Queen Victoria, who wanted to be able to see from Buckingham Palace whether her members were, as she put it, "at work". The light was named after Acton Smee Ayrton, who had served as First Commissioner of Works in the 1870s.

• 6. War, Damage, and Rebuilding

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  German bombs struck the palace on fourteen separate occasions during the Second World War. A bomb that fell on the 26th of September 1940 lifted the statue of Richard the Lionheart from its pedestal and bent its sword; the image circulated as a symbol of democracy, described as that which "would bend but not break under attack".

  The worst night came on the 10th-the 11th of May 1941, when the palace sustained at least twelve direct hits and three people were killed: two policemen and Edward Elliott, Resident Superintendent of the House of Lords. Both the Commons Chamber and the roof of Westminster Hall caught fire simultaneously. Firefighters could not save both, so the hall was prioritised. The chamber was lost. The Lords Chamber and Clock Tower were damaged in the same raid.

  The Lords moved temporarily into the Robing Room while the Commons took over the Lords Chamber, and State Openings of Parliament continued in the borrowed spaces. Evidence of the damage from that period is still visible today, including marks on one of the doors struck by Black Rod. The Commons Chamber was rebuilt in a simplified style by the architect Giles Gilbert Scott and formally opened by King George VI on the 26th of October 1950, when he accepted an invitation to an informal tour of the new structure from Commons leaders. As Parliament's need for space grew after the war, the institution acquired offices in the nearby Norman Shaw Building in 1975 and the custom-built Portcullis House, completed in 2000.

• 7. Incidents and Traditions

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  The failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 brought one of the most dramatic episodes in the palace's history. A group of Roman Catholic gentry planned to assassinate the Protestant King James I by detonating large quantities of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on the 5th of November 1605. Guy Fawkes was the conspirator assigned to set off the charge. The plot was discovered before it could be carried out, and surviving conspirators were tried for high treason in Westminster Hall, convicted, and executed by hanging, drawing and quartering. Since then, the Yeomen of the Guard have searched the palace cellars before every State Opening of Parliament.

  On the 11th of May 1812, Spencer Perceval was shot and killed in the lobby of the House of Commons by a Liverpool merchant, John Bellingham. Perceval remains the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. On the 24th of January 1885, Fenian bombs targeted the palace along with the Tower of London; Police Constable William Cole attempted to carry one device away from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft before it exploded, seriously injuring him. A second bomb detonated in the Commons Chamber shortly after.

  More recently, a 9 kg bomb planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in Westminster Hall on the 17th of June 1974, injuring eleven people. On the 30th of March 1979, a car bomb killed Conservative politician Airey Neave as he drove out of the Commons car park, one day after that year's general election was announced. The palace also carries quieter traditions: the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone may drink while speaking in the Commons chamber, typically an alcoholic beverage during the Budget; MPs rub the feet of bronze statues of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George for good luck before their maiden speeches; and the red lines on the Commons floor, traditionally said to be just over two sword-lengths apart, mark a boundary that Members are expected to respect when speaking.

• 8. Westminster Hall

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  Westminster Hall is the oldest surviving part of the palace and the one structure that outlasted both great fires. It was erected in 1097 for William II, known as William Rufus, and at the time of its construction it was the largest hall in Europe. Its functions over the centuries ranged from royal courts of law to coronation banquets, and in more recent times it has been the venue for lyings in state and ceremonial funerals.

  The hall's most celebrated feature is its hammerbeam roof, the largest clearspan medieval roof in England, measuring 20.7 by 73.2 metres. The roof was commissioned for Richard II in 1393 and built by the royal carpenter Hugh Herland, with oak timbers from woods in South-East England assembled near Farnham in Surrey, some 35 miles from Westminster. The master mason Henry Yevele remodelled the rest of the hall at the same time, refacing the walls and adding fifteen life-size statues of kings in niches. Eighty-three unique depictions of Richard's favourite heraldic badge, a resting chained White Hart, are woven into the renovations.

  In January 2018, the House of Commons voted for both Houses to vacate the palace entirely to allow for a complete refurbishment, with the work expected to take at least six years and to begin no sooner than 2025. The Restoration and Renewal Client Board, a joint committee of both Houses, was formed in September 2022 to oversee the project. As of early 2026, no agreed plan had been reached, and the palace that survived two fires, wartime bombing, and nine centuries of political life still waits for its next chapter.