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Statue of Margaret Thatcher (Palace of Westminster)

2007 sculpturesBronze sculptures in the United KingdomMonuments and memorials in LondonMonuments and memorials to womenPalace of Westminster
Sculptures of women in the United KingdomStatues in the City of WestminsterStatues of Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher (Bronze Statue) 2007
Margaret Thatcher (Bronze Statue) 2007

A statue of Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, stands in the Members' Lobby of the Houses of Parliament in London. It is a bronze sculpture of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was commissioned in 2003 following a change in rules to allow the depiction of living prime ministers in Parliament under certain conditions. The bronze statue, sculpted by Antony Dufort, was unveiled on 21 February 2007 by Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, with Thatcher in attendance.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Statue of Margaret Thatcher (Palace of Westminster) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Statue of Margaret Thatcher (Palace of Westminster)
New Palace Yard, London Lambeth

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N 51.4997 ° E -0.1248 °
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Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)

New Palace Yard
SW1A 0AA London, Lambeth
England, United Kingdom
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parliament.uk

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Margaret Thatcher (Bronze Statue) 2007
Margaret Thatcher (Bronze Statue) 2007
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Members' Lobby
Members' Lobby

The Members' Lobby is a hallway in the Palace of Westminster used by members of the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Members of Parliament may congregate here for discussions while not dealing with other business. The Lobby is situated immediately south of the Commons Chamber, close to the Central Lobby, and is off-limits to members of the public during voting sessions. It hosts offices of government and opposition whips, who are responsible for organising voting along party lines. Former British prime ministers are honoured with statues and busts in the Lobby. The monuments include: Four bronze statues, located next to the main doors at either end of the Lobby, portraying David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. Three stone statues, located next to the side doors, portraying Benjamin Disraeli, Arthur Balfour and H. H. Asquith. The fourth plinth in the set stands empty. Twelve bronze busts around the walls at the southern end, of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law, Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan and John Major. The bronze statue of Thatcher was unveiled in February 2007, and placed close to the bust of her Conservative predecessor Edward Heath. The sculptures of Heath, Thatcher and James Callaghan were added sooner after their premierships than those of previous prime ministers, following a change in the rules on depiction in Parliament so as to allow representation within a person's lifetime, instead of at least 10 years after their death as was previously the case. Following the inclusion of Thatcher, the Commons Works of Art Committee subsequently pursued a special project to commemorate all Prime Ministers to hold office since 1902, searching for monuments to the three who still had yet to be recognised: Cambell-Bannerman, Law and Chamberlain. This project was successfully completed after the addition of a bust of her successor, John Major. A bust of Tony Blair has been approved by the Commons’ Works of Art Committee but no sculptor has yet been chosen. The Committee has also discussed plans for portraits of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.The Members' Lobby was restored after its destruction during The Blitz in World War II, as attested by the monogram of King George VI on its doors. The bomb-damaged arch at the entrance to the Commons was retained as a reminder of 10–11 May 1941; it is now known as the "Churchill Arch". The feet of Oscar Nemon's bronze statue of Winston Churchill, as well as that of David Lloyd George, which flank the Commons doors, have been eroded, apparently by generations of MPs rubbing them for luck.

House of Commons of Great Britain
House of Commons of Great Britain

The House of Commons of Great Britain was the lower house of the Parliament of Great Britain between 1707 and 1801. In 1707, as a result of the Acts of Union of that year, it replaced the House of Commons of England and the third estate of the Parliament of Scotland, as one of the most significant changes brought about by the Union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the course of the 18th century, the office of Prime Minister developed. The notion that a government remains in power only as long as it retains the support of Parliament also evolved, leading to the first ever motion of no confidence, when Lord North's government failed to end the American Revolution. The modern notion that only the support of the House of Commons is necessary for a government to survive, however, was of later development. Similarly, the custom that the Prime Minister is always a Member of the Lower House, rather than the Upper one, did not evolve until the twentieth century. The business of the house was controlled by an elected Speaker. The Speaker's official role was to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the results of votes, and the like. The Speaker decided who may speak and had the powers to discipline members who break the procedures of the house. The Speaker often also represented the body in person, as the voice of the body in ceremonial and some other situations. The title was first recorded in 1377 to describe the role of Thomas de Hungerford in the Parliament of England. By convention, Speakers are normally addressed in Parliament as Mister Speaker, if a man, or Madam Speaker, if a woman. In 1801, the House was enlarged to become the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, as a result of the Act of Union of 1800 which combined Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

St Mary Undercroft
St Mary Undercroft

The Chapel of St Mary Undercroft is a Church of England chapel located in the Palace of Westminster, London, England. It had been a crypt below St Stephen's Chapel and had fallen into disuse, being used at various times as a wine cellar, dining room for Speakers (who had holes bored into the wall to accommodate two kitchen chimneys) and (now unconfirmed by records) stables for Oliver Cromwell's horses.After a fire had destroyed St Stephen's Chapel in 1834, the undercroft returned to its former use as a place of worship. Although much stonework was damaged in the fire, it was decorated in the 1860s by Edward Middleton Barry with gilded, painted and stenciled designs in rich colours to cover the walls, floor and vaulting. The backdrop of the altar depicts royal British saints. On the census night of 2 April 1911, suffragette Emily Davison hid in a cupboard overnight in the Chapel in order to be entered on the census form for the building as a way of ensuring her address was recorded as the House of Commons. A commemorative plaque, unveiled by Tony Benn in 1999, is fixed to the cupboard.It is still used for worship today. In particular, children of peers, who possess the title of "The Honourable", have the privilege of being able to use it as a wedding venue. In addition, members of Parliament and peers have the right to use the chapel as a place of christening in the baptistery and font (whose basin was made from a single slab of alabaster) designed by Barry.It is a Royal Peculiar chapel – outside the responsibility of any diocesan bishop. The building is administered through the Lord Great Chamberlain and Black Rod and it has no dedicated clergy: by convention services were conducted by the Rector of St Margaret's, Westminster, a member of the Chapter of Westminster Abbey. In 2010 the Speaker of the House of Commons used his right of appointment to nominate an outsider, Rev'd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, as the Speaker's Chaplain. The body of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was kept in St Mary Undercroft on the night before her funeral in April 2013. The honour was also accorded for the body of Tony Benn, the long-serving Labour politician, before his funeral in March 2014, as well as that of PC Keith Palmer who was fatally stabbed carrying out his duties on the palace grounds during the 2017 Westminster attack.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the sovereign (Crown-in-Parliament), the House of Lords, and the House of Commons (the primary chamber). Both houses of Parliament meet in separate chambers at the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London. The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual, consisting of the most senior bishops of the Church of England; and the Lords Temporal, consisting mainly of life peers, appointed by the sovereign, and of 92 hereditary peers, sitting either by virtue of holding a royal office, or by being elected by their fellow hereditary peers. Prior to the opening of the Supreme Court in October 2009, the House of Lords also performed a judicial role through the Law Lords. The House of Commons is an elected chamber with elections to 650 single-member constituencies held at least every five years under the first-past-the-post system. By constitutional convention, all government ministers, including prime minister, are members of the House of Commons or, less commonly, the House of Lords and are thereby accountable to the respective branches of the legislature. Most cabinet ministers are from the Commons, whilst junior ministers can be from either house. With the global expansion of the British Empire, the UK Parliament has shaped the political systems of many countries as ex-colonies and so it has been called the "Mother of Parliaments".In theory, the UK's supreme legislative power is officially vested in the Crown-in-Parliament. However, the Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation; thus power is de facto vested in the House of Commons.

Burning of Parliament
Burning of Parliament

The Palace of Westminster, the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament, was largely destroyed by fire on 16 October 1834. The blaze was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks which had been used as part of the accounting procedures of the Exchequer until 1826. The sticks were disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords, which caused a chimney fire in the two flues that ran under the floor of the Lords' chamber and up through the walls. The resulting fire spread rapidly throughout the complex and developed into the largest conflagration in London between the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of the Second World War; the event attracted large crowds which included several artists who provided pictorial records of the event. The fire lasted for most of the night and destroyed a large part of the palace, including the converted St Stephen's Chapel—the meeting place of the House of Commons—the Lords Chamber, the Painted Chamber and the official residences of the Speaker and the Clerk of the House of Commons. The actions of Superintendent James Braidwood of the London Fire Engine Establishment ensured that Westminster Hall and a few other parts of the old Houses of Parliament survived the blaze. In 1836 a competition for designs for a new palace was won by Charles Barry. Barry's plans, developed in collaboration with Augustus Pugin, incorporated the surviving buildings into the new complex. The competition established Gothic Revival as the predominant national architectural style and the palace has since been categorised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, of outstanding universal value.