Houses of Parliament and The Palace of Westminster

The Houses of Parliament and the Palace of Westminster

This building comprises the surviving parts of the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, formed of two main phases of construction. The earlier phase begins with Westminster Hall, built in 1097-99 and remodelled between 1394-1401 by Henry Yevele with Hugh Herland as carpenter. The interior of the hall features a vast hammerbeam roof of exceptionally early date and scale, with outstanding late 14th-century figure sculpture flanking the dais arch. This earlier phase also includes St Stephen's Chapel crypt, probably built around 1292-97 and 1320, which retains perhaps the earliest surviving lierne vault, and St Stephen's Cloister and Chantry Chapel built in 1526-29, considerably restored after World War II bomb damage.

The second phase consists of the Houses of Parliament, known as the New Palace of Westminster, built between 1835 and 1860 by Sir Charles Barry, with detailing, interior decoration and furnishings by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. The offices against the side of Westminster Hall, dating from 1888, are by J L Pearson, where the House of Commons and Lobby were rebuilt after World War II bombing.

The building has slate roofs and galvanised cast iron plate roofs to Barry's work, which also features internal fireproof construction of iron joists and brick jack-arches. The plan is cruciform and axial with a spine, with principal elevations facing the river. Barry's massing combines symmetry on the river front terrace with asymmetry of major vertical accents, including the Elizabeth Tower, commonly called Big Ben, and the central fleche and turrets above the roof line.

Pugin's contribution included perpendicular Gothic detailing of rhythmic buttresses and bay windows, close panelling with open and blind tracery, and a wealth of sculpture, carved crockets, pinnacles and finials. Pugin's interiors in the Houses of Parliament represent the best preserved and most complete example of the quality and ideals of his secular decoration, including all details and furnishings, combined with a complete programme of mid-19th and early 20th-century wall paintings. Loose furniture items are not covered by listing.

The Houses of Parliament include the great vaulted Royal Entrance at the foot of the Victoria Tower, the Lords entrance with buttressed pinnacled porch in the centre of the Old Palace Yard range, St Stephen's Porch gatehouse across the south end of Westminster Hall giving access to the cross-axis of the plan, St Stephen's Hall, the north entrance to Westminster Hall with its great window above, and the crocketed finialed gable flanked by square battlemented towers, restored in 1820. Three gateways in E M Barry's cloister-arcade to the east range of the New Palace Yard terminate in the virtually free-standing clock tower of Big Ben. The riverside terrace has cast iron ornamental lamps on the buttress-piers of the Embankment wall.

The Palace of Westminster was an important site of political protest, particularly by the Women's Social and Political Union, the militant suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. St Stephen's Hall became the location for numerous suffragette protests from 1906 onwards, as the Palace represented the Parliamentary system that suffragettes sought to access. In November and December 1906, suffragettes entered the Hall and held impromptu meetings, leading to arrests. The entrance to St Stephen's Hall was the focus of much militant protest during regular Women's Parliaments held by the WSPU from 1906 to 1911, where women attempting to present resolutions to Parliament were pushed back by police, with hundreds arrested.

In February 1908, a large group of suffragettes managed to enter the yard using a removals van and were able to enter the hall before arrest. In April 1909, four women entered the lobby to speak to their MPs and then chained themselves to statues of Walpole, Lord Somers, Lord Selden and Lord Falkland. The spur of Lord Falkland's boot statue was damaged when the women were removed. In June 1909, suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop, accompanied by Victor Duval of the Men's Political Union, stencilled a passage from the Bill of Rights on the wall. When Wallace Dunlop was imprisoned for this offence, she became the first suffragette prisoner to go on hunger strike.

At the time of the 1911 census, Emily Wilding Davison hid in a broom cupboard in the building in order to be enumerated within Parliament. She was found on the night of the census, with the official record stating "found hiding in the crypt of Westminster Hall since Saturday". This was a deeply symbolic act, representing the ultimate goal of the campaign to have a presence in Parliament through the electoral process. A plaque records this important protest. Davison went on to commit the most famous protest associated with the struggle for suffrage when she was fatally injured by the King's horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.