White Chamber

The Painted Chamber was part of the medieval Palace of Westminster. It was gutted by fire in 1834, and has been described as "perhaps the greatest artistic treasure lost in the fire". The room was re-roofed and re-furnished to be used temporarily by the House of Lords until 1847, and it was demolished in 1851. The chamber was built by Henry III, parallel to St Stephen's Chapel. It is said that the site was previously occupied by a room in which Edward the Confessor had died. The new chamber was intended for use by the king primarily as a private apartment, but was also used as a reception room, and it was constructed and decorated to impress visitors. The chamber was relatively long and narrow, measuring approximately 82 by 28 feet (25.0 m × 8.5 m), with a state bed (for example the marriage bed of Henry VII) towards one end under a painting of Edward the Confessor. One wall included a squint providing a view of the altar in a chapel next door, so the king could view religious services from the chamber. The ceiling of wooden planks with decorative bosses survived until at least 1819, when it was replaced with plaster. The chamber was originally named the King's Chamber. It adjoined a new Queen's Chamber to the south, later used for meetings of the House of Lords until it moved to the Lesser Hall or White Chamber in 1801; the Queen's Chamber was demolished along with other buildings in 1823. The King's Chamber came to be known as the Painted Chamber after its decorative wall paintings, of Virtues and Vices, and Bible figures. The brightly coloured paintings took 60 years to complete, starting in 1226. The original paintings were repaired in 1263 after they were damaged by fire, and again in 1267 after they were damaged by a mob that invaded the palace. The murals were supplemented by paintings commissioned by subsequent monarchs. The Painted Chamber was later neglected, and the walls were whitewashed, papered and covered by tapestries as depicted in the watercolour of William Capon from 1799. In 1800 the original murals were detected under the whitewash, but it was only in 1819 that they were fully revealed. In that year the Society of Antiquarians commissioned the artist and antiquarian Charles Stothard to make watercolour copies of the murals; and Thomas Crofton Croker, clerk of works at Westminster and an amateur artist, made his own somewhat more complete copies in watercolour, now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum. During repairs in 1816, four ceiling paintings—one seraph and three prophets painted on oak panels—were removed by Adam Lee, the "Labourer in Trust" at Westminster. After passing through several owners, two of them (the seraph and a prophet) resurfaced in Bristol in 1993 and were acquired by the British Museum two years later. The whereabouts of the other two are not known. A wooden patera from the original ceiling is preserved in the Museum bequeathed by the architect Sir John Soane, clerk of works at Westminster until 1794 and 30 years later responsible for modifications there.The Painted Chamber survived largely intact for over 600 years. In the later 13th century, some of the early English Parliaments summoned by Edward I met in the Painted Chamber, and the room continued to be used for important state ceremonies, including the State Opening of Parliament. The House of Lords met nearby in the Queen's Chamber and later the White Chamber. The House of Commons, however, did not have a chamber of its own; it sometimes held its debates in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey until a permanent home in the former St Stephen's Chapel became available in the 16th century. The Painted Chamber, between the chambers used by the House of Lords and the House of Commons, was used for the State Opening, and when both Houses met in conference.The room was also used for other state purposes. At the trial of Charles I, the evidence of the witnesses summoned was heard in the Painted Chamber rather than Westminster Hall. The death warrant of Charles I was signed here, and the body of Charles II rested the night in this chamber before being interred at Westminster Abbey. It was also used for the lying-in-state of Elizabeth Claypole (the daughter of Oliver Cromwell), William Pitt the Elder, and William Pitt the Younger. In around 1820, the room was being used for the Court of Claims. The chamber was gutted in the devastating fire in 1834, but the thick medieval walls survived. Wood salvaged from the Painted Chamber was used to make souvenirs. The room was re-roofed and re-furnished to be used temporarily by the House of Lords for the State Opening of Parliament on 23 February 1835. It was used by the House of Lords until 1847, and finally demolished in 1851.

The State Opening of Parliament is an event which formally marks the beginning of a session of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It includes a speech from the throne known as the Queen's Speech (or King's Speech). The event takes place in the House of Lords chamber on the first day of a new session, which is usually in May or June, and traditionally in November, but can occur at any time of year depending on the timing of General Elections and parliamentary session start dates. It takes place in front of both Houses of Parliament. The monarch, wearing the Imperial State Crown, reads a speech that has been prepared by his or her government outlining its plans for that parliamentary year. In 1974, when two general elections were held, there were two State Openings. Queen Elizabeth II has opened every session of Parliament since her accession in 1952, except in 1959, 1963, and 2022. In 1959 and 1963, she was pregnant with Prince Andrew and Prince Edward respectively and those two sessions were opened by Lords Commissioners, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Geoffrey Fisher in 1959 and Michael Ramsey in 1963), empowered by the Queen. The Lord Chancellor (Viscount Kilmuir in 1959 and Lord Dilhorne in 1963) read the Queen's Speech on those occasions. The Queen also missed the 2022 State Opening on the advice of her doctors due to "episodic mobility issues." That session was opened by her son Charles, Prince of Wales and her grandson William, Duke of Cambridge who were serving as Counsellors of State. On this occasion, the Prince of Wales read the Queen's Speech on behalf of his mother.The most recent ceremony was held on 10 May 2022.

The Woolsack is the seat of the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords, the Upper House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Before 2006, it was the seat of the Lord Chancellor.

The House of Lords, formally The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster located in London, England.The House of Lords scrutinises bills that have been approved by the House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends bills from the Commons. While it is unable to prevent bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the House of Lords acts as a check on the more powerful House of Commons that is independent of the electoral process. While members of the Lords may also take on roles as government ministers, high-ranking officials such as cabinet ministers are usually drawn from the Commons. The House of Lords does not control the term of the prime minister or of the government. Only the lower house may force the prime minister to resign or call elections.While the House of Commons has a defined number of members, the number of members in the House of Lords is not fixed. Currently, it has 781 sitting members. The House of Lords is the only upper house of any bicameral parliament in the world to be larger than its lower house, and is the second-largest legislative chamber in the world behind the Chinese National People's Congress. The Queen's Speech is delivered in the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. In addition to its role as the upper house, until the establishment of the Supreme Court in 2009, the House of Lords, through the Law Lords, acted as the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom judicial system. The House also has a Church of England role, in that Church Measures must be tabled within the House by the Lords Spiritual.

Old Palace Yard is a paved open space in the City of Westminster in Central London, England. It lies between the Palace of Westminster to its north and east and Westminster Abbey to its west. It is known as the site of executions, including those of Sir Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes and other conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, and James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, following the Battle of Preston. St Margaret Street/Abingdon Street divides Old Palace Yard into two parts, running diagonally from the north-west to the south-east. The eastern, larger part belongs to the grounds of the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. To the north of the Yard is St Stephen's Entrance, the public entrance into the Palace, as well as the great South Window of Westminster Hall. Standing near this window and facing away from it is a bronze equestrian statue of Richard Coeur de Lion (King Richard I, also known as "Richard the Lionheart"). Created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, the statue was completed in 1856 and installed in its present location in 1860. The eastern side of Old Palace Yard is defined by the West Front of the Palace, which is part of the precincts of the House of Lords; the carriage porch of the Peers' Entrance marks the middle of this frontage, and the Victoria Tower its southern end. Access to this part of Old Palace Yard is restricted for security reasons by means of concrete barriers. For most of the year it is used as a car park for the House of Lords, but it is cleared of barriers and street furniture for the annual State Opening of Parliament, the formal opening of the legislative session by the British monarch. Conveyed from Buckingham Palace to Parliament in a horse-drawn carriage, the monarch passes through the Yard en route to the Sovereign's Entrance, at the foot of the Victoria Tower. The western part of Old Palace Yard is freely accessible to the public. To its west are located the Henry VII Chapel and the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, while to its south stands 6–7 Old Palace Yard, the sole survivor of the row of houses that used to surround the Yard. The building is now part of the Parliamentary Estate. Close by is a statue of King George V, made of Portland stone; sculpted by Sir William Reid Dick and unveiled in 1947, it stands on a pedestal by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and faces the Peers' Entrance of the Palace of Westminster. In 2002, an analemmatic sundial was fitted into the Yard's pavement in front of the statue, as a gift to Queen Elizabeth II from Parliament on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee.

Richard Coeur de Lion is a Grade II listed equestrian statue of the 12th-century English monarch Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, who reigned from 1189 to 1199. It stands on a granite pedestal in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster in London, facing south towards the entrance to the House of Lords. It was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, an Italian sculptor whose works were popular with European royalty and the nobility, though often less well regarded by critics and the artistic establishment. The statue was first produced in clay and displayed at The Great Exhibition in 1851, where it was located outside the west entrance to the Crystal Palace. It was well received at the time and two years later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed a list of illustrious subscribers to a fund that aimed to raise money for the casting of the statue in bronze. Although the money was duly raised and the bronze cast of the statue was finally completed in 1856, a lengthy dispute delayed its installation for several years. The original idea had been to erect the statue as a memorial to the Great Exhibition. This prompted opposition, as did proposals to place it outside Charles Barry's newly completed Palace of Westminster. Various other locations to display the statue were initially considered before agreement was reached that it would be placed in Old Palace Yard, Marochetti's preferred location. It was installed in October 1860, though it was not until March 1867 that it was finally completed with the addition of bronze bas-reliefs on either side of the pedestal. The quality of the statue's workmanship caused problems during its first half-century; the horse's tail fell off the day after it was installed at the Great Exhibition, and forty years after its installation it was discovered to be riddled with holes and to have never been properly attached to its pedestal. It narrowly escaped destruction during the Second World War when a German bomb dropped during the Blitz landed a few metres away and peppered it with shrapnel. The pedestal and the horse's tail were damaged and Richard's sword was bent by the blast. In 2009, the Parliamentary authorities undertook a project to conserve and restore the statue.

The Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom preserves and makes available to the public the records of the House of Lords and House of Commons back to 1497, as well as some 200 other collections of parliamentary interest. The present title was officially adopted in November 2006, as a change from the previous title, the House of Lords Record Office. Over three million records are held by the archives in the Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster on 5.5 miles of shelving. Some of the most important constitutional records of the United Kingdom are stored by the Archives, including the Petition of Right (1628), the Death Warrant of Charles I (1649), the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, the draft and final Bill of Rights (1689), the Slave Trade Act (1807 and 1833), the Great Reform Act (1832), and successive Representation of the People Acts. Its public search-room is open from Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 16:00, and is free to the public, although appointments to visit must be made owing to limited seating space. The archives also oversees records management for Parliament, has an active outreach programme and frequently appears on radio and TV programmes.

The Victoria Tower is a square tower at the south-west end of the Palace of Westminster in London, adjacent to Black Rod's Garden on the west and Old Palace Yard on the east. At 98.5 metres (323 ft), it is slightly taller than the Elizabeth Tower (formerly known as the Clock Tower and popularly known as 'Big Ben') at the north end of the Palace (96.3 metres (316 ft)). At the time of its construction it was the tallest square tower in the world. It was designed by Charles Barry in the Perpendicular Gothic style and was completed in 1860. It houses the Parliamentary Archives in archive conditions meeting the BS 5454 standard, on 12 floors. All 14 floors of the building were originally linked via a single wrought-iron Victorian staircase of 553 steps, of which five floors survive. The steps are made of granite quarried from Cairngall in Aberdeenshire.The main entrance at the base of the tower is the Sovereign's Entrance, through which the Monarch passes at the State Opening of Parliament. On top of the Victoria Tower is an iron flagstaff from which flies the Union Flag or, when the Sovereign is present in the Palace, the Royal Standard. The flag used to be flown only on days when either House of Parliament sat, but since January 2010 it has been flown every day.

The Parliamentary Estate is the land and buildings used by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The most notable part of the Parliamentary Estate is the Palace of Westminster, where the chambers of both houses of Parliament (the Commons and the Lords) are located. The oldest part of the Palace of Westminster is Westminster Hall, the historic core of the building; the present-day Palace of Westminster was built after a major fire in 1834 destroyed all of the palace except for Westminster Hall, the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, the Cloisters and Chapter House of St Stephen's, and the Jewel Tower. The palace includes two courtyards, the Old Palace Yard and New Palace Yard; the former dates to the time of Edward the Confessor, while the latter was built in 1097 on the orders of William II (Rufus).The northern part of the Parliamentary Estate lies north of Bridge Street. It includes Canon Row; Parliament Street; Derby Gate (formerly the Whitehall Club); houses office space for parliamentary staff and the Commons Library); Norman Shaw North and Norman Shaw South (two 1890s buildings, both containing office space for members of Parliament (MPs) and their staff); Portcullis House (an office building for MPs and staff, opened February 2001); and Richmond House and Richmond Terrace (which became part of the Parliamentary Estate in January 2018).

St Stephen's Chapel, sometimes called the Royal Chapel of St Stephen, was a chapel in the old Palace of Westminster which served as the chamber of the House of Commons of England and that of Great Britain from 1547 to 1834. It was largely destroyed in the fire of 1834, but the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the crypt survived. The present-day St Stephen's Hall and its porch, which are within the new Palace of Westminster built in the 19th century, stand on exactly the same site and are today accessed through the St Stephen's Entrance, the public entrance of the House of Commons.

The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in May 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. The Acts ratified the treaty of Union which created a new unified Kingdom of Great Britain and created the parliament of Great Britain located in the former home of the English parliament in the Palace of Westminster, near the City of London. This lasted nearly a century, until the Acts of Union 1800 merged the separate British and Irish Parliaments into a single Parliament of the United Kingdom with effect from 1 January 1801.

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.