Following a disastrous fire in 1834, construction of the new Houses of Parliament began in 1840 under the direction of architects Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. Built in Perpendicular Gothic style, the Lords’ Chamber opened in 1847 and the Commons opened five years later. In addition to their importance as the center of the British government, the structures have become enduring landmarks that have helped to define London’s Thames riverbank.
At about 6:00
Now a part of London, Westminster was for many centuries a suburb of the city and home to the royal family. White Hall, Westminster Abbey
London’s Houses of Parliament.
While conservatives lamented the destruction of the ancient seat of government, liberals, who held sway in the 1830’s, saw the project as a great opportunity to re-embody the newly reforming Parliament. Some wanted to relocate the Houses (they resented the term “palace” with its undemocratic overtones) on a new site, away from the traditional royal neighborhood. Proponents made much of the odd shape of the original building site and problems of drainage and flooding. King William IV
In March of 1835 the House of Commons appointed a select committee to advise on sites and architectural styles. The original site was kept, but arguments now centered on the style of the Houses. The classical style traditionally had great appeal in England, but so did the flavor of continental revolution and Catholic monarchism. Given the aesthetic sway of Romanticism, a more native style such as Gothic or Elizabethan proved more popular. A design competition was organized around these two choices and announced on June 3. Any republicanism embodied in the Classical was obviated, while English tradition and the stability it implied carried the day. A royal commission was empaneled to judge the architectural drawings and plans, and on January 31, 1836, Charles Barry’s entry was chosen.
Barry had selected a fifteenth-century Perpendicular Gothic style that echoed the Henry VII Chapel in the abbey. It was a style he had worked with in Birmingham
To help dispel fears of hydraulic problems, work on the Thames embankment was accelerated, a project that increased and regularized somewhat the new building’s footprint. Barry’s wife ceremonially laid the keystone on April 27, 1840, and work began in earnest. The firm of Grissell and Peto carried out most of the construction. The stone selected for the exterior was carefully chosen, but unfortunately it began to wear soon after placement. Nonetheless, the walls rapidly went up on the long building with its great courtyards and rows of windows. Barry relieved the potential monotony of this type of edifice by applying asymmetry to the elevation itself and to the two main towers, the one over the royal entrance—King’s and later Victoria Tower—at 336 feet tall and the clock tower at the opposite end, home of Big Ben, which is 316 feet tall. A third tower was added for ventilation over the central lobby, adding further interest to the skyline if not cleaner air inside.
In 1844, when Barry’s plan for the structure was finally completed, he brought in Pugin once again, this time to carry out the design work for everything from inkwells to door frames to wallpaper and furniture
In April 1847 the Lords’ Chamber was opened to Queen Victoria
The Pugin-designed clock tower was completed only in early 1857. The great bell in the carillon, nicknamed Big Ben for Benjamin Hall, the first commissioner of the office of works, cracked in October and had to be recast and remounted a year later. Work on the speaker’s house ceased in January, 1859, and Barry died the following year. His second son
As with the choice of site, the selection of the northern European, medieval, and High Church Gothic styles over the pagan and Roman Classical—or any other competing—style was significant. The style played neither to the democrats nor to the imperialists but reinforced the sense of English tradition, directly connecting the “new” both to what had been in the place of the Houses and what remained. Architecturally, the chosen style also helped legitimize the Gothic Revival movement, which had often drifted downward into the silliness of “follies” and architectural frippery that trivialized the tradition. Gothic Revival would now move from the outer ring of the eccentrics to the very heart of the empire.
Even in the early twenty-first century, the Houses of Parliament visually, more than any other structure, define the Thames River bank, clearly eclipsing the royal Tower of London at the other end of the older city. Symbolically the Houses articulately link the political tradition of popular government with the storied past and the roots of English world power.
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Atterbury, Paul, ed. A. W. N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, for Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 1995. A catalog published to accompany an exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center. Contains ten essays about Pugin, including a biographical sketch and discussions of the Gothic sensibility, Pugin’s interior design, Pugin’s Catholic churches in England and Ireland, and Pugin and the Gothic Revival movement in France and North America. -
Cannadine, David, et al. The Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture. London: Merrell, 2000. An illustrated history of Barry’s most famous work, placing the buildings in a historical, political, and cultural context. -
Clark, Kenneth. The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1964. The most popular and readily available work on the peculiar zest for making everything old that seized the Victorians. A classic, scholarly read. -
Cooke, Robert. The Palace of Westminster: Houses of Parliament. London: Burton Skira, 1987. An illustrated overview of the history of housing Parliament, including the rebuilding after the 1834 fire. -
Riding, Christine, and Jacqueline Riding, eds. The Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture. London: Merrell, 2000. A large-format, well-illustrated collection of essays on the historical building and its rebuilding and uses. -
Rorabaugh, W. J. “Politics and the Architectural Competition for the Houses of Parliament.” Victorian Studies 18 (1973) 155-175. A brief but careful study of the politics surrounding the choice of the site and Barry’s plan for the palace. -
Solender, Katherine. Dreadful Fire: Burning of the Houses of Parliament. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1984. An exhibition catalog of contemporary views of the disaster. -
Stanton, Phoebe. Pugin. New York: Viking, 1972. A critical discussion of the architectural style and works of Pugin, including the Houses of Parliament.
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Sir Charles Barry; Daniel Hudson Burnham; John Nash; Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin; Sir George Gilbert Scott; George Edmund Street; J. M. W. Turner; William IV.