Palace of Westminster

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is colloquially known as the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative chambers which occupy the building. The palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom; "Westminster" has become a metonym for the UK Parliament and government, and the Westminster system of government commemorates the name of the palace. The Elizabeth Tower of the palace houses the bell nicknamed Big Ben and is a landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general. The palace has been a Grade I listed building since 1970 and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

The building was originally constructed in the eleventh century as a royal palace and was the primary residence of the kings of England until 1512, when a fire destroyed the royal apartments. The monarch moved to the adjacent Palace of Whitehall, but the remainder of the palace continued to serve as the home of the Parliament of England, which had met there since the 13th century. In 1834 a second, larger fire destroyed the majority of the palace, but the eleventh century Westminster Hall was saved and incorporated into the replacement building.

The competition to design the new palace was won by the architect Charles Barry, who chose a Gothic Revival style for the building. Construction started in 1840 and lasted for 30 years, suffering delays, cost overruns, and the deaths of Barry and his assistant, Augustus Pugin. This new palace is notable for its ornate decoration, and contributed to the proliferation of Gothic Revival architecture in other places. The palace contains chambers for the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the monarch, and has a floor area of 112476 m2. Extensive repairs had to be made after the Second World War, including rebuilding the destroyed Commons chamber. Despite further conservation work having been carried out since, the palace is still in need of some repairs.

History

Old Palace

The site of the current palace and Houses of Parliament may have been used by Cnut during his reign from 1016 to 1035, and from 1045 Edward the Confessor built a palace and the first Westminster Abbey. The oldest surviving part of the palace is Westminster Hall, which dates from the reign of William II . The palace was the principal residence of the English monarchs in the late Medieval period. In 1512, during the early reign of Henry VIII, a fire destroyed the royal apartments of the palace. In 1534 Henry moved to the neighbouring Palace of Whitehall, formerly York Place, which he had seized from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Although Westminster remained a royal palace, from this point on its primary occupants were the two houses of Parliament and various courts of law.

The predecessor of Parliament, the Curia Regis, met in Westminster Hall when the king was in residence. The "Model Parliament", considered the first Parliament of England, met at the palace in 1295; while medieval parliaments of England met in a variety of locations, the palace was frequently used and developed into the body's permanent home. The palace did not have purpose-built chambers for the House of Commons or the House of Lords; instead, it used the available large gathering spaces built for the palace. In time, the Commons adapted St Stephen's Chapel for its use in the sixteenth century, and the Lords used the Painted Chamber and, from 1801, the White Chamber.

The palace underwent significant alterations from the 18th century onwards, as Parliament struggled to carry out its business in the limited available space. These included a new storage and committee rooms by John Vardy, completed in 1770; a new official residence for the Speaker of the House of Commons, completed in 1795; and significant alterations and a new building by James Wyatt, completed in 1801. The last alterations were undertaken by Sir John Soane between 1824 and 1827. They included new library facilities for both Houses of Parliament and new law courts for the Chancery and King's Bench.

Fire and reconstruction

On 16 October 1834, a fire broke out in the palace after an overheated stove used to destroy the Exchequer's stockpile of tally sticks set fire to the House of Lords Chamber. Both Houses of Parliament were destroyed, along with most of the other buildings in the palace complex. Westminster Hall was saved thanks to firefighting efforts and a change in the direction of the wind. The Jewel Tower and the undercroft, cloisters, and chapter house of St Stephen's Chapel were the only other parts of the palace to survive.

William IV offered the almost-completed Buckingham Palace to Parliament, hoping to dispose of a residence he disliked; however, the building was considered unsuitable for parliamentary use and the gift was rejected. The Painted Chamber and White Chamber were hastily repaired for temporary use, and in 1835, following that year's General Election, the King permitted Parliament to make "plans for [its] permanent accommodation". Each house created a committee and a Perpendicular Gothic Revival design by the architect Charles Barry was chosen. Barry was inexperienced with Gothic and relied heavily on Augustus Pugin to design details. The Lords Chamber was completed in 1847, and the Commons Chamber in 1852. Although most of the work had been carried out by 1860, construction was not finished until a decade afterwards.

Second World War damage and restoration

During the Second World War, the palace was hit by bombs on fourteen separate occasions. A bomb that fell on 26 September 1940 lifted the statue of Richard the Lionheart from its pedestal and bent its sword, an image that was used as a symbol of the strength of democracy, "which would bend but not break under attack".

The worst raid took place in the night of 10–11 May 1941, when the palace took at least twelve hits and three people (two policemen and Resident Superintendent of the House of Lords, Edward Elliott) were killed. The Commons Chamber and the roof of Westminster Hall were both set alight; as the firefighters could not save both, the hall was prioritised and saved, while the chamber was destroyed. The Lords Chamber and Clock Tower were damaged in the same raid. The Commons Chamber was rebuilt in a simplified style after the war, being completed in 1950.

Recent history

As the need for office space in the palace increased, Parliament acquired office space in the nearby Norman Shaw Building in 1975 and in the custom-built Portcullis House, completed in 2000. This increase has enabled all Members of Parliament (MP) to have their own office facilities.

The palace was designated a Grade I listed building in 1970 and a World Heritage Site in 1987. The fabric of the building is in urgent need of restoration. In January 2018, the House of Commons voted for both houses to vacate the palace to allow for a complete refurbishment of the building, which would take at least six years and start no sooner than 2025. In September 2022, the Restoration and Renewal Client Board, a joint committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, was formed to oversee the necessary works. As of February 2026, no plan had been agreed.

Exterior

Charles Barry's collaborative design for the Palace of Westminster uses the Perpendicular Gothic style, which was popular during the 15th century and returned during the Gothic revival of the 19th century. Barry was a classical architect, but he was aided by the Gothic architect Augustus Pugin. Westminster Hall, which was built in the 11th century and survived the fire of 1834, was incorporated in Barry's design. Pugin was displeased with the result of the work, especially with the symmetrical layout designed by Barry; he famously remarked, "All Grecian, sir; Tudor details on a classic body".

Stonework

In 1839, Charles Barry toured Britain to inspect quarries and buildings, accompanied by a committee that included two leading geologists and a stone carver. They selected Anston, a sand-coloured magnesian limestone quarried in the villages of Anston, South Yorkshire, and Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire. Two quarries were chosen from a list of 102, with the most of the stone coming from the former. A crucial consideration was transport, achieved on water via the Chesterfield Canal, the North Sea and the rivers Trent and Thames. Anston was cheaper, and "could be supplied in blocks up to four feet thick and lent itself to elaborate carving".

Barry's new Palace of Westminster was rebuilt using the sand-coloured Anston limestone. However, the stone soon began to decay because of pollution and the poor quality of some of the stone used. Although such defects were clear as early as 1849, nothing was done for the remainder of the 19th century, even after much studying. During the 1910s, however, it became clear that some of the stonework would need to be replaced. In 1928, it was decided to use Clipsham stone, a honey-coloured limestone from Rutland, to replace the decayed Anston stone. The project began in the 1930s but was halted by the outbreak of the Second World War and was not completed until the 1950s. By the 1960s, pollution had again begun to damage the stonework. A stone conservation and restoration programme for the external elevations and towers began in 1981 and ended in 1994.

Towers

Victoria Tower

The Palace of Westminster has three main towers. The largest and tallest is the 98.5 m Victoria Tower, which occupies the south-western corner of the palace. The tower was an integral part of Barry's original design, and he intended it to be the most memorable element, conceiving it as the keep of a legislative "castle". The tower was redesigned several times, and its height increased progressively; upon its completion in 1858 it was the tallest secular building in the world.

At the base of the tower is the Sovereign's Entrance, used by the monarch whenever entering the palace to open Parliament or for other state occasions. The 15 m high archway is richly decorated with sculptures, including statues of Saints George, Andrew and Patrick, and Queen Victoria. The main body of the tower houses the Parliamentary Archives in 8.8 km of steel shelves spread over 12 floors. The archives include the master copies of all Acts of Parliament since 1497 and important manuscripts such as the original Bill of Rights and the death warrant of King Charles I. At the top of the cast-iron pyramidal roof is a 22 m flagstaff, from which flies the Royal Standard (the monarch's personal flag) when the Sovereign is present in the palace. On all other days, the Union Flag flies from the mast.

Big Ben (Elizabeth Tower)

At the north end of the palace is the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known by the nickname "Big Ben". At 96 m it is only slightly shorter than the Victoria Tower, but much slimmer. It was called the Clock Tower until 2012, when it was renamed to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The Clock Tower was designed by Augustus Pugin and built after his death. Charles Barry asked Pugin to design the clock tower because Pugin had previously helped Barry design the palace.

The tower houses the Great Clock, which uses the original mechanism built by Edward John Dent to designs by amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison. It is highly accurate by nineteenth-century standards, striking the hour to within a second of the time, and remaining reliable since it entered service in 1859. The time is shown on four dials 7 m in diameter, which are made of milk glass and are lit from behind at night; the hour hand is 2.7 m long and the minute hand 4.3 m.

Five bells hang in the belfry above the clock. The four quarter bells strike the Westminster Chimes every quarter-hour. The largest bell strikes the hours; officially called the "Great Bell", it is generally referred to as Big Ben, a nickname of uncertain origins which, over time, has been applied to the whole tower. The original hour bell cracked during testing and was recast; the present bell later developed a crack of its own, which gives it a distinctive sound. It is the third-heaviest bell in Britain, weighing 13.8 tonnes. In the lantern at the top of Elizabeth Tower is the Ayrton Light, which is lit when either House of Parliament is sitting after dark. It was installed in 1885 at the request of Queen Victoria, so that she could see from Buckingham Palace whether the members were "at work", and named after Acton Smee Ayrton, who was First Commissioner of Works in the 1870s.

Central Tower

The shortest of the palace's three principal towers (at 91 m), the octagonal Central Tower stands over the middle of the building, immediately above the Central Lobby. It was added to the plans on the insistence of Dr. David Boswell Reid, who was in charge of the ventilation of the new Houses of Parliament: his plan called for a central chimney through which what he called "vitiated air" would be drawn out of the building with the heat and smoke of about four hundred fires around the palace. To accommodate the tower, Barry was forced to lower the high ceiling he had planned for the Central Lobby and reduce the height of its windows; however, the tower proved to be an opportunity to improve the palace's exterior design, and Barry to make it a spire to balance the effect of the more massive lateral towers. The Central Tower completely failed to fulfil its stated purpose.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Palace of Westminster” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.