Since my post last Thursday, I have had a full weekend’s worth of adventures, including a thorough tour of the Houses of Parliament, a cold visit to Stonehenge, and an enjoyable, if too quick, trip to the city of Bath. Although this post began life as a description of all three, I have written so much about Parliament alone that it can stand as it’s own post. The rest of the weekend will follow shortly (hopefully tonight).
On Friday afternoon, I met Michelle, Cat, Lauren, Kyla, and Nick Reaves at the London Center to walk over to the Houses of Parliament. Lauren is interning with a member of parliament this semester and invited us for a tour with her office manager in the afternoon. Parliament is, usually, not in session on Fridays, so the building is slightly more accessible than during the rest of the week.
We entered through an ultra-modern office building across the street with tight security. Even after going through the checkpoint, we needed somebody inside to let us in as guests. Inside, we learned that the building is one of the most expensive office buildings in the world, and the price shows in the central courtyard encased in glass that features imported American trees, the elegant steal suspension cables supporting the building, the detailed wood and stonework, and the thorough, if subtle, security system. The central courtyard featured two different restaurants, one in a sit down style, the other with more a cafeteria feel, and we had purposely arrived early for our two o’clock to eat lunch at the later. They had a wide variety of quality options – I had a baked potato with a chicken and onion sauce, others had beef and rice with what seemed like Indian spicing – and their prices were very low compared to what I have paid in non-security-protected areas of London thus far.
After lunch, we made our way into the Parliament building itself (the expensive building where we ate lunch was only a parliamentary office building). We walked down and escalator from the courtyard and immediately entered a stone passage, which we followed into an exterior courtyard enclosed by the building and a fence on two side each, with Big Ben anchoring the corner from which we entered. From the courtyard, we entered Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster complex. Completed in 1097 (only thirty years after the Norman Conquest!), it is a large stone room, the walls of which support a remarkable ornate wooden roof that spans the room without support from additional columns. The room has served a wide variety of purposes over the centuries, and plaques in the floor note where particular events – such as the gold and silver jubilee addresses of Queen Elizabeth II or the condemnations of death for William Wallace and Saint Thomas Moore, to name a few of the more memorable ones – took place. The first picture below shows our group in the hall and the second, taken while standing at the plaque indicating where Winston Churchill laid in state, shows a close up of the intricate stained glass window covering the far wall.
Our tour group in Westminster Hall
Pictured from Left to Right:
Nick, Lauren, Kyla, Michelle, Cat, Joel
Next we entered the Lobby of the Houses of Parliament, an octagonal stone room with a high ceiling decorated by a gold mosaic. Imitation columns run up the vertices of the octagon and house statues of many of the monarchs who served up to, approximately, the nineteenth century. The Houses of Commons and Lords were on our left and right, respectively, as we entered the lobby. Individual constituents can register and wait for hours and days in the lobby for the opportunity to speak with their Member of Parliament (MP). After a short wait in the lobby for Lauren’s office manager, our tour commenced and we returned to Westminster Hall and the intermediate hall before moving on the House of Lords.
With a history as the meeting place of the British aristocracy, the House of Lords, like the lobby, featured very ornate decorations, everything from gold leaf and marble fixtures to dark wood and red, regal carpeting. We first walked through one of the two hallways on either side of the chamber. Peers congregate in the hallways to discuss business and also line up single file to pass through these hallways and into the chamber when voting. At the end of the hallway and beyond the chamber, we entered a small sitting room with a fireplace and then a grand receiving hall – once again decorated with gold and marble in addition to large (and famous) portraits of sovereigns dating back multiple centuries – in which members of both houses often assemble to receive foreign dignitaries, such as presidents and prime ministers. Large murals and opposite walls depict major English victories over French opponents, so, apparently, representative of the French government prefer not to appear in this particular room.
The final room in the Lords wing of the building is the Sovereign’s receiving room, where the Queen arrives and puts on her formal royal attire when opening each session of Parliament. All of the carpet in the room is blue, the color of the sovereign in England, and the only color of carpeting in the building on which the Queen has permission to walk. Painted on insets around the top of the wooden walls in the room are depictions of five of the seven courtly virtues (they ran out of money for the other two). Removable portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert hang on the other two panels above the small, very worn throne that dates to the time of Queen Victoria. House of Lords policy holds that they cannot repair anything, such as a worn throne, unless it has fallen into a state of disrepair, so this chair will likely receive restoration work within a monarch or two. Also notable in the room is a large clock that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Although the French contend that a British noble stole the clock during the French Revolution, the British instead claim that a noble merely agreed to take care of the clock for her during the revolution until such time that the British government can return it to an appropriate French government. Clearly, no such French government has yet come to power.
Unfortunately, an ornery security guard did not allow us onto the floor of the House of Lords itself, so we returned to the lobby and waited for a short time before entering the House of Commons. Built as a gathering place for commoners, rather than the aristocracy, the House of Commons features much simpler decorations than the House of Lords across the lobby – stone rather than marble, lighter wood, and green, common carpet. During World War II, Germany bombed the building, but only destroyed the House of Commons, rather than the older Westminster Hall or the much more expensive House of Lords, much to the relief of the British. We walked along similar voting hallways to the back of the chamber and then entered the floor; there were no rooms for the sovereign at the back of this house.
The floor itself is actually rather small. Featuring the same green and light wood color scheme, the room provides padded benches on opposing sides facing each other, allowing for the traditional confrontational debates. Bright lights and microphones make clear the fact that the local equivalent of C-SPAN televises these proceedings, and a large glass barrier on one quarter of gallery keeps the proceedings open to the public while preventing public interjections. Apparently, somebody once threw something at Tony Blair.
Well I hope that this constitutes a sufficiently thorough description of the Houses of Parliament. As I said about, I wrote much more than I expected to about Parliament, but I wanted to be sure to have a record of the experience. I hope to have a post about Stonehenge and Bath, in addition to the days since, up soon, but, for now, I will close with this picture of Big Ben.
Big Ben
Joel
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