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 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