Episode notes
The Palace of Westminster began as a royal residence in the 11th century under kings such as Edward the Confessor and William II. After a fire in 1512, Henry VIII moved to Whitehall and left the complex to Parliament and the courts, with the Commons later meeting in St Stephen's Chapel. In 1834 workmen burning obsolete Exchequer tally sticks overloaded the stoves beneath the House of Lords and set the palace ablaze, a scene J. M. W. Turner painted from the Thames. Westminster Hall survived thanks to a low tide, a shift in wind, and firefighters. Charles Barry, a classical architect, won the rebuild competition, and Augustus Pugin wrapped his symmetrical plan in Gothic detail, complaining it was all Grecian, sir.
The soft Anston limestone began decaying in coal smoke acid rain by 1849, part of why a multi-billion pound restoration now looms. The Victoria Tower holds 5.5 miles of shelving with Acts of Parliament since 1497, Big Ben cracked twice before settling into its imperfect chime, and David Boswell Reid's central ventilation tower failed at its only job. Inside, the Central Lobby gave us the word lobbying, the war-damaged Churchill Arch leads into a Commons deliberately too small for all its members, and the red Lords chamber centers on the Woolsack.
- How medieval tally sticks recorded debts by splitting a notched piece of wood
- The Ayrton Light, installed so Queen Victoria could see if MPs were still sitting
- The monarch's route through the Robing Room, Royal Gallery, and Prince's Chamber
- The cellar search since the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, Spencer Perceval's 1812 assassination, and the 1974 IRA bomb
- The doorkeepers' communal snuff box and the Chancellor's right to a drink during the Budget