Westminster Hall
New Palace Yard

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Westminster Hall is a historic building located in the Palace of Westminster complex in London, England. It was built in 1097 as a part of William II's (son of William the Conqueror) royal palace and was used for feasts and entertainment including masques, music, dancing, etc. It was also used for dramatic legal trials and important state occasions such as coronation banquets. Today, it is the oldest surviving building on the Palace of Westminster complex and is still used for ceremonial and official events, such as ceremonial addresses and public exhibitions.

Many famous events have taken place within its walls, including the trial of King Charles I in 1649, where he was sentenced to death by beheading. Other notable events that have taken place in Westminster Hall include the lying-in-state of monarchs and prime ministers such as Queen Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill.

In addition to its rich history, Westminster Hall is also notable for its stunning architecture. It features a grand oak roof, which is one of the largest and oldest of its kind in Europe.

Overall, Westminster Hall and New Palace Yard are both iconic landmarks in London, steeped in history and tradition. They continue to play an important role in the cultural and political life of the city, attracting visitors from around the world with their beauty, grandeur, and historical significance.

New Palace Yard is the courtyard area situated directly outside Westminster Hall.

Westminster Hall

Westminster Hall, the oldest existing part of the Palace of Westminster, was erected in 1097 by King William II ('William Rufus'), at which point it was the largest hall in Europe. The roof was probably originally supported by pillars, giving three aisles, but during the reign of King Richard II, this was replaced by a hammer-beam roof by the royal carpenter Hugh Herland, "the greatest creation of medieval timber architecture", which allowed the original three aisles to be replaced with a single huge open space, with a dais at the end. The new roof was commissioned in 1393. Richard's master builder Henry Yevele retained the original dimensions, refacing the walls, with fifteen life-size statues of kings placed in niches. The rebuilding had been begun by King Henry III in 1245, but by Richard's time had been dormant for over a century. In Westminster Hall, the favourite heraldic badge of Richard II — a white hart, chained, and in an attitude of rest — is repeated eighty-three times, without any of them being an exact copy of another.

The largest clearspan medieval roof in England, Westminster Hall's roof measures 20.7 by 73.2 metres (68 by 240 ft). Oak timbers for the roof came from royal woods in Hampshire and from parks in Hertfordshire and from that of William Crozier of Stoke d'Abernon, who supplied over 600 oaks in Surrey, among other sources; they were assembled near Farnham, Surrey, 56 kilometres (35 mi) away. Accounts record a large number of wagons and barges which delivered the jointed timbers to Westminster for assembly.

Westminster Hall has served numerous functions. Until the 19th century, it was regularly used for judicial purposes, housing three of the most important courts in the land: the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Court of Chancery. In the reign of Henry II (1154–89), a royal decree established a fixed sitting of judges in the Hall. In 1215, Magna Carta stipulated that these courts would sit regularly in the Hall for the convenience of litigants. In 1875, the courts were amalgamated into the High Court of Justice, which continued to have chambers adjacent to Westminster Hall until moved to the then-new Royal Courts of Justice building in 1882. In addition to regular courts, Westminster Hall also housed important state trials, including impeachment trials and the state trials of King Charles I at the end of the English Civil War, William Wallace, Thomas More, Cardinal John Fisher, Guy Fawkes, the Earl of Strafford, the rebel Scottish lords of the 1715 and 1745 uprisings, and Warren Hastings. The St Stephen's Porch end of the Hall displays under the stained glass window the Parliamentary War Memorial listing on eight panels the names of Members and staff of both Houses of Parliament and their sons killed serving in the First World War; the window itself, installed in 1952, commemorates members and staff of both Houses who died in the Second World War. In 2012, a new stained glass window commemorating Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee was installed opposite this window, at the other end of the hall.

Westminster Hall has also served ceremonial functions. From the twelfth century to the nineteenth, coronation banquets honouring new monarchs were held here. The last coronation banquet was that of King George IV, held in 1821; his successor, William IV, abandoned the idea because he deemed it too expensive. The Hall has been used as a place for lying in state during state and ceremonial funerals. Such an honour is usually reserved for the Sovereign and for their consorts; the only non-royals to receive it in the twentieth century were Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1914), the 48 victims of the crash of the airship R101 (1930) and Winston Churchill (1965). In 1910 the hall was used for the lying in state of King Edward VII, followed by King George V in 1936, King George VI in 1952, Queen Mary in 1953, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002, and Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. Around 250,000 mourners filed past the coffin, which resulted in the delamination of the Yorkstone floor.

The two Houses have presented ceremonial Addresses to the Crown in Westminster Hall on important public occasions. For example, Addresses were presented at Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (1977), Golden Jubilee (2002) and Diamond Jubilee (2012), the Accession of Charles III (2022), the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution (1988), and the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War (1995).

It is considered a rare privilege for a foreign leader to be invited to address both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. Since the Second World War, the only leaders to have done so have been French President Charles de Gaulle in 1960, South African President Nelson Mandela in 1996, Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2012, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023. President Obama was the first US president to be invited to use the Hall for an address to Parliament and Aung San Suu Kyi was the first non-head of state to be given the accolade of addressing MPs and peers in Westminster Hall.

Following reforms in 1999, the House of Commons now uses the Grand Committee Room next to Westminster Hall as an additional debating chamber. (Although it is not part of the main hall, these are usually spoken of as Westminster Hall debates.) In contrast with the two main Chambers, in which the government and opposition benches directly face each other, the seating in the Grand Committee Room is laid out in a U-shape, a pattern meant to reflect the non-partisan nature of the debates there.

New Palace Yard

New Palace Yard is a yard (area of grounds) northwest of the Palace of Westminster in Westminster, London, England. It is part of the grounds not open to the public. However, it can be viewed from the two adjoining streets, as a result of Edward Middleton Barry, who also assisted with its landscaping, having used railings rather than walls or fencing in its design. The yard has existed since about the year 1100, but was greatly reduced in the 18th century to allow for the construction of new streets and buildings, the most notable of which is the wing taking up the eastern end and having the most prominent tower of the current palace. Speaker's Green fronts the Thames. An underground car park used by Members of Parliament is beneath. Before the latest incarnations of the palace, the yard was an open public space used diversely such as for speeches, tournaments, pillorying, and executions. It has twice been the scene of terrorist attacks.

Location

New Palace Yard takes up the northwest corner of the grounds of the Palace of Westminster. It is bordered to the north by Bridge Street, to the east by the Palace's North Front and Big Ben, to the south by Westminster Hall, and to the west by Parliament Square. It is accessed from Parliament Square via the Carriage Gates. Underneath the yard is a five-level underground car park with 450 spaces for the cars of Members of Parliament, built from 1972 to 1974 for £2.5 million (equivalent to £35,100,000 in 2021). Westminster Hall's north end is accessed via the yard, which is also the site of the Members' Entrance to the House of Commons. A public arcade along the Westminster Bridge side of Speaker's Green descends to a walkway under Bridge Street connecting Westminster tube station and Westminster Pier beneath the Victoria Embankment.

Description

The yard is laid out as a garden with a formal avenue of lime trees, benches of Portland stone, and a central lawn surrounded by an oval roadway. Around the outside are a number of old catalpa trees. A fountain on the central lawn was installed in 1977 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II and recalls the lost medieval fountain of Henry VI. The fountain stands in an octagonal pool in the centre of which is a large welded steel sculpture by Walenty Pytel. The sculpture is decorated with depictions of birds and beasts from six continents and is surmounted by a gilded crown.

History

The name of New Palace Yard refers to the first Palace of Westminster, built by the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor around 1050. The yard was created after William II of England constructed Westminster Hall in 1097 and was given the appellation "New" to distinguish it from Old Palace Yard a few hundred metres further south. For several hundred years, it was probably a patch of low-lying open marshy ground or perhaps even an inlet, prone to flooding up to very recent times. A rapid increase in the level of the Thames necessitated the construction of a river wall on the yard's eastern side in the 12th century. It was reclaimed by laying down cobbles on successive layers of debris that had accumulated over the years and was laid out as open space by the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Thereafter, as Westminster grew, the yard came to be surrounded by buildings and walls.

The yard's function in relation to the Palace of Westminster was similar to that of an outer bailey in a castle. It was one of three yards in the palace: New Palace Yard was the outer ward, a large open space that the general populace could access; the Green Yard was the middle ward, where the royal administration and the great offices of state were located; and Old Palace Yard was the inner ward, where the royal apartments were located.

The interior of the yard was dominated for centuries by a large cupola-topped fountain built by Henry VI in 1443, which stood until the late 17th century. According to the 16th-century historian John Stow, the fountain, which was known as the Great Conduit, was made to run with wine to mark coronations and other great state events. The remains of the fountain were rediscovered in the 1970s during the construction of the underground car park.

Several executions and mutilations took place there: in 1580 the Puritan attorney John Stubbs and his servant William Page both had their hands cut off as punishment for libelling Queen Elizabeth I, while in 1612 the Scottish nobleman Robert Crichton, 8th Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, was hanged in the yard for murder. Lesser criminals were publicly exposed in a pillory erected on the site. Two such were the pretender Perkin Warbeck, pilloried in 1498, and Titus Oates, pilloried there during the reign of King James II for the Popish Plot. The last person to be pilloried in the yard was John Williams, the publisher of The North Briton newspaper in 1765.

Tournaments and royal festivities were also staged there. On one occasion, when Catherine of Aragon married Arthur, Prince of Wales in 1501, a grand tournament was held in New Palace Yard. A stand was erected for the King on the south side of the yard and challengers exited Westminster Hall on horseback. They proceeded into the yard accompanied by a pageant car which was drawn by four animals and carried a "fair young lady" on "a goodly chair of cloth of gold". Jousting is last recorded to have taken place in the yard in 1547 when Edward VI was crowned.

Changes to the layout of New Palace Yard

New Palace Yard was originally much larger than it is today. An etching by Wenceslaus Hollar, published in 1647, shows the area as an enclosed rectangle with houses flanking Westminster Hall on both sides, Henry VI's fountain and stands for coaches in the centre, a row of shops, taverns, and coffee houses on the north side and a large square gatehouse on the west side giving access to King Street, built by Henry VIII in 1532 and demolished in 1723. The gatehouse was built by Richard III and stood until 1707. A tower to the north side was built under Edward I and was demolished in 1715; it housed the bell known as Great Tom.

Many of the buildings around New Palace Yard were swept away in the 1750s by the urban redevelopment that accompanied the construction of Westminster Bridge. Bridge Street was built to the north of the yard, Parliament Street to connect the Palace with Charing Cross, and Abingdon Street to connect it with Millbank. A row of buildings separated the yard from Bridge Street until they were demolished in 1866–7, opening up the yard to public view.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the perimeter of New Palace Yard was occupied by coffeehouses and taverns. It provided a site for public meetings such as the September 1838 rally in support of the People's Charter. Public access to New Palace Yard was restricted from 1866 after a demonstration held in Hyde Park for parliamentary reform turned violent. Edward Barry was commissioned to enclose the yard with railings standing 7 feet (2.1 m) high, which were completed by February 1868. The works entailed major changes to the fabric of the yard, the surface of which was lowered by as much as 3 metres (9.8 ft) in places. The yard was occasionally opened to the public to attend public speeches by the likes of William Ewart Gladstone, but is now treated as a secure area, closed to the public.

Terrorist attacks

New Palace Yard has twice been the scene of terrorist attacks. On 31 March 1979, an Irish National Liberation Army car bomb killed MP Airey Neave as he exited the underground car park at New Palace Yard. On 22 March 2017, a British terrorist crashed a car into the perimeter fence of the Palace grounds, after driving into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. After abandoning the vehicle, he ran into the New Palace Yard and fatally stabbed PC Keith Palmer, an unarmed police officer guarding the Carriage Gates. He was then shot by an armed close protection officer and died at the scene.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.