Last week’s Your Places of Mine celebrated the rebuilding of the House of Commons after the original interior was bombed during one of the last raids of the Blitz. This week, Clive and John consider the Palace of Westminster, otherwise known as the Houses of Parliament, as a whole. After the old Palace had been all but destroyed by fire in 1834, Charles Barry won the competition to rebuild it, producing a building that may have shortened his life but is surely one of the herculean achievements of the Victorian age. With the help of the superb designer of Gothic ornament, AWN Pugin, he produced a building that is both deeply traditional in its style and iconography and intensely modern in the technology that underpinned it. The glorious, theatrical composition of turrets, pinnacles, and rich tracery purposefully evokes the virtues of an idealised medieval past, in the hope of inspiring the legislators of the present day.
Only two years before the fire, the Great Reform Act had been passed. Until that point much of the governance of the country had taken place in the splendid homes of the aristocracy, so the state of the Houses of Parliament may not have concerned them unduly. The new building would be equipped with all the amenities that Parliamentarians could find in their London clubs. It was at the same time more sumptuous and more middle class.
Innumerable statues and paintings of saints, heroes and kings reminded post-Reform politicians of the standards they were expected to live up to. The Lords chamber was always richer than that of the Commons – a contrast made all the greater when the Commons was toned down after the Second World War. But the greatest richness of all was reserved for the monarch.
What does it mean? How was it all done? What does the future hold in store? The subject is almost endless but Clive and John manage to do it justice in just an hour!
