Miss Moppet’s tour of the Houses of Parliament: part six and last

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

And finally…this is the Central Lobby, which is at the centre (surprisingly enough) of the Westminster complex.  Here’s what the visitor guide has to say about it:

Central Lobby is at the heart of our democracy in action where people can exercise their right to lobby, the end of a long journey from one king, one vote, to one person, one vote.

I like this way of putting it.

It is a public area whilst the House of Commons is sitting.  When a request to lobby an MP is made, a doorkeeper will be sent to find the MP.  If they are available, the MP may come and meet their constituent and discuss the important matter that concerns them.  However, it is advisable to book such meetings in advance.

Take note of the way that is put…the important matter which concerns them.  Don’t anyone go running off to Westminster to drag your MP out of a debate on the strategic importance of Britain’s nuclear deterrent just to tell him or her you missed an episode of Midsomer Murders and did they by chance happen to tape it?

Information on booking a tour of the Houses of Parliament is here for UK residents, here for overseas visitors.

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part five

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

This photo shows the public gallery with the bulletproof screen which was put in after 9/11.  Although the Commons Chamber looks large – and it is – it feels quite cosy.  There are actually not enough seats for all the MPs, so no doubt it gets a bit too cosy sometimes.

Actually the cosiness is everywhere.  The decor looks back to the medieval period, but the atmosphere is identical to that of certain Oxbridge colleges, inns of court and gentleman’s clubs: neo-Victorian comfort.  But after picking up a copy of a pamphlet entitled This Week’s Business on my way out, I could hardly accuse Parliament of being stuck in the past.  This week the Lords debate, among other things, ‘the near-silent operation of electric and hybrid vehicles’ and ‘broadband in rural communities’ while the Commons discuss ‘mobile network roaming capabilities’ and ‘low carbon technologies.’  It’s a world away from the pomp and ceremony of the State Opening of Parliament, but that has its place too.

Visiting at the time that I did, between the creation of the Supreme Court and the State Opening, I was able to see ancient tradition and sweeping reform at work in the same place at the same time.  I left feeling that all the past conflict between the Crown, the Lords and the Commons was worth it to give us a contemporary democracy which doesn’t reject everything in its past.

Coming next: bonus post on the tour.

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part four

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

The decoration in the Houses of Parliament is colour-coded: the Queen’s space is blue, the Lords are red, the Commons are green. The Lords Chamber survived the Second World War, so it is older than the Commons.  This photo was taken facing the end with the throne, where the Queen sits to read her speech when she opens Parliament.  The little red curtain that runs along the bottom of the gallery balcony was put there at the request of Queen Victoria, who was tired of the peers being distracted from her speech by the sight of ladies’ ankles.

The combination of high-tech and heraldry is a little strange and it’s also strange to think that the effigies of the signatories of Magna Carta no longer look down on their descendants, many of whom lost the right to their seat in the Lords in 1999.  More recently (October 2009) the Law Lords have been evicted: they will no longer sit as peers in the House of Lords, instead continuing to hear appeals in Britain’s new Supreme Court.  This amounts to a crucial separation between judiciary and legislature, a reform of huge symbolic and constitutional significance, so it was pleasant to see it proceeding discreetly and without much of a fuss.  Since then I have been interested to discover that the Supreme Court is decorated with glass panels etched with lines from Magna Carta.  We caught a glimpse of a framed copy of that very document on the way to the Lords.  I don’t think though that it can have been one of the four surviving 1215 copies as it seems they are held elsewhere.

Next: the cosy Commons Chamber

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part three

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

St Stephen’s Hall is on the site of St Stephen’s Chapel, where the royal family worshipped when they were staying at Westminster. In 1550 it was converted to a debating chamber for the House of Commons, who sat facing each other in the choir stalls. This rather makeshift arrangement obviously suited them, as three more chambers and 450 years later they are still doing exactly the same thing.

As the guide was talking I was standing quite close to the statues in the niches on the right hand side of the archway as pictured here, and suddenly I realised who I was looking at: King John.  Above him you can see Queen Berengaria of Navarre.  On the left hand side are Eleanor of Aquitaine and above her, Henry II.

Next: Queen Victoria’s colour coded modesty curtain, and a glimpse of Magna Carta.  Oh, and the separation of the judiciary and the legislature

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part two

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Westminster Hall was completed for William Rufus in 1099, so this year it celebrates its 910th birthday. It survived the two fires and has been the setting for numerous royal events – every coronation feast from Richard I in 1189 to George IV in 1832, the trials of Anne Boleyn and Charles I, and the lying in state of kings and queens, most recently (2002) HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. At the time I wanted to go because it’s not the sort of thing you see every day, but the four-mile queue put me off.

My first impression of the hall was that it was big. The second was that it was intensely atmospheric – you really sense the weight of the past here, and it feels quite different from the rest of the palace. The third was that it was absolutely freezing cold. It was quite a cold day – in fact I’ve lost one of my gloves and this was the day I gave in and bought a new pair because my hands were so cold – but it seemed even colder in that hall. I couldn’t see any fireplaces. Possibly they would have brought in braziers in the Middle Ages?

The hall was designed as living space – until the reign of Henry VIII, who moved to Whitehall, monarchs lived at the Palace of Westminster.

Next: how a chapel became a debating chamber

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part one

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament. Accession number WOA 1978

Today I went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. As they’re currently preparing for the State Opening of Parliament (Wednesday 18 November 2009) the Robing Room, which the Queen will use on the day, was not open to the public. But I did get to see Westminster Hall, St Stephen’s Hall, the Lords Chamber and the Commons Chamber. More about that later, but first, how the Houses of Parliament came to catch on fire.

Up until 1826, the Exchequer, which was housed in the Palace of Westminster, was recording its income with tally sticks. Tally sticks are pieces of wood with notches carved into them to represent a payment – the higher the payment, the bigger the notch. The stick was then split in two to provide payer and payee with a receipt. In 1826 the government decided to upgrade its technology, and was left with two cartloads of redundant tally sticks. On 16 October 1834 the Clerk of Works decided to burn them in stoves in the basement of the House of Lords. With the result you can see above.

Most of the buildings on the site were destroyed in the fire. They were rebuilt in the Gothic style over more than thirty years, at a cost of more than £2 million. In May 1941, incendiary bombs fell on the Commons Chamber and burnt it down again.  Undaunted, Winston Churchill ordered it rebuilt exactly as it was before.

Find out more: online

Next: shivering in the nine-hundred-year-old Great Hall