Westminster Palace

“ Knights, and citizens, and throngs of people are filling every street, and crowding every window. The queen is passing through the city to her palace of Westminster, in a litter borne on poles, and supported by stately prancing steeds; and right and left, behind and in advance, ride valiant men, whom the king has deputed to this honour. The queen has come from Eltham Palace, where the hawthorn-trees are all in blossom, and the little birds are singing blithely, as if to hail their queen on the day of her coronation. ”

“ To-day, when we stand on Westminster Bridge or Lambeth Bridge, and survey the huge building which provides London with one of its greatest landmarks, we are looking at a new Palace: from the River not a stone of the old structure is visible. A magnificent Palace it is too! Its towers, one at each end, rise high into the air, one of them 320 feet high, the other 20 feet more; and its buildings cover a matter of 8 acres. ”

“ That evening, after dark, the queen, her five daughters, and Richard, duke of York, stole out of the palace of Westminster into the shelter of the abbot's house, which fortunately lay within the sanctuary precincts. All night long the dwelling, usually so quiet, was a scene of bustle and confusion, for every moment servants were arriving from the palace at Westminster bearing with them great chests full of jewels, clothes, hangings, and carpets. ”

“ I wonder how many living men—even of the few who have seriously studied the Westminster of the past—could draw from memory a plan of Whitehall Palace, or describe in general terms its courts and buildings. Yet it was a very great house; certainly not venerable or picturesque, such as that which stood beside the Abbey: there were no sculptured fronts, no tall gables, no tourelles, no gray walls, no narrow windows, no carved cloisters ”

“ Here the eye is attracted by a confused mass of roofs, some flat, turreted and embattled, some pointed, with fantastical gables and stacks of tall chimneys—others with cupolas and tall clock-towers—others with crocketed pinnacles, and almost all with large gilt vanes. A large palace is a city in miniature; and so is it with Whitehall. It has two other courts besides the one we are surveying; equally crowded round with buildings, equally wanting in uniformity, but equally picturesque. On the east it extends to Scotland Yard, and on the west to the open space in front of Westminster Hall. ”

“ King’s House of Westminster, there now remain nothing more than a single hall much changed, a crypt much restored, a cloister, and a tower. But this is autumnal opulence compared with the Palace of Whitehall. Of that broad, rambling place, as taken over and enlarged by Henry VIII., there now remains nothing at all—not a single chamber, not a tower, not a gateway, not a fragment; everything is gone: even the disposition of its courts and lanes, generally the last thing to be lost, can no longer be traced. ”

“ Henry was delighted with his new residence, and proceeded to add new buildings, and to enclose nearly all St. James's Park up to the site of Buckingham Palace. Covering a vast extent of ground, the palace rambled from Scotland Yard along the riverside, to where Downing Street now stands, and spread across the roadway by means of a long gallery. Never so beautiful as Westminster, the Whitehall of the Tudors was a mass of brick buildings, erected without any particular scheme just as occasion required, resulting, as Besant declares, in a building "without dignity and without nobility." ”

“ I. In considering the growth of the design of the New Palace at Westminster, it is necessary to remember, that it was not left entirely free, to be determined by the taste of the architect or the requirements of the building, but was influenced by the site, by the existence of Westminster Hall, of the Courts of Law, and of a portion of the old St. Stephen’s Chapel, and by the limitation to either the Elizabethan or Gothic style dictated by the judges. ”

“ Her majesty was first to be conducted from her palace in Westminster to the royal apartments in the Tower; and a splendid water procession was appointed for the purpose. At this period, when the streets were narrow and ill-paved, the roads bad, and the luxury of close carriages unknown, the Thames was the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The old palace of Westminster, as well as those of Richmond and Greenwich, the favorite summer residences of the Tudor princes, stood on its banks, and the court passed from one to the other in barges. ”

“ The residence of the Queen, when in London, is generally supposed to be Buckingham Palace, a long gloomy looking building in St. James Park, not a stones' throw from the Marble Arch in Hyde Park or Westminster Abbey. The same big flashy looking soldiers in red coats, and hideous grenadier bearskins are to be seen marching up and down opposite this palace gate just as they do about St. James Palace, or at the Horse Guards in Parliament street. ”

“ Not far from the bridge, in old Palace Yard, stands Westminster Hall.
p. 5354. Westminster Hall
Is thought to be the largest room in Europe unsupported by pillars, being two hundred and seventy feet in length, and seventy-four in breadth. The roof is of curious workmanship in oak, and reminds the beholders of a grove of trees, whose top branches extend toward each other till they unite. A great feast was held in this vast apartment, and other rooms of the palace, in the days of King Richard the Second, who is said to have entertained ten thousand guests, with his usual hospitality. ”

“ It is probable that few will question its grandeur and comprehensiveness. It would have made Westminster a palatial quarter of the town, grouping together the buildings, which the public service of a great country requires, in an unity, justified by their actual unity of purpose, and all but necessary to their full architectural effect. The great quadrangle of nine acres, with its sides formed by the Abbey, the Government Palace, the New Palace of Westminster, and the public buildings removed in order to clear the area, must have been its most striking feature. ”

“ And now is London left behind us; there is no more trade along the banks of the river save a little at Westminster. These stairs upon the bank, and these carved and painted barges belong to the Palaces of the Bishops, Abbots, and great Lords. We pass Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, Burleigh House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Durham House, York House, all with gardens, terraces, and spacious courts. And so we come to the King’s Stairs, Westminster. Here is the King’s Palace, a crowded, busy, noisy place, and beyond is the Abbey of St. Peter, rich and famous. A noble church it is ”

“ Scarcely anything remains to-day to remind us of the vast size and the magnificence of the Palace of Westminster, the royal residence of the English Kings from the time of Edward the Confessor until the reign of Henry VIII. For five centuries the monarchs of England kept their Court on the island of Thorney, within the sound of the bells of the great minster raised by the piety of the saintly Edward. ”

“ Yet how changed! Instead of a forest of reeds and bushes, here was a stately Palace and a still more stately Abbey. Busy men and women lived, where formerly only birds and water-rats made their homes. The island had, in fact, become a little town, divided from the greater city by massive walls.
“We are facing the Palace now,” said Godmother presently. “Do you see anything about it that looks familiar?”
“Why, surely that’s Westminster Hall?” Betty exclaimed after a moment, pointing to a long steep-roofed building in the midst of towers and pinnacles that were strange to her. ”

“ Britons like better to make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be slaves to bad oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to read a manuscript respecting the Indian Government, as many as forty Commons arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed the moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to the open air.
Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but it is observable that this structure, however much its magnificence deserves commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of association. ”

“ It looks so new and modern, with its Houses of Parliament, and its iron railings, that one forgets how ancient a place it is. What stood on the site of Westminster Hall before William Rufus built it we know not, but certainly some buildings belonging to the Old Palace of Cnut and Edward the Confessor. ”

“ Westminster Hall was built as the banqueting room of the palace. There is no uniformity in the architecture of the pile, which is exceedingly complicated and confused. My examination, at this time, was too hurried for details; and I shall refer you to a later visit to England for a description. A vacant space at the abbey end of the palace is called Old Palace-yard, which sufficiently indicates the locality of the ancient royal residence; and a similar, but larger space or square, at the entrance to the hall, is known as New Palace-yard. ”

“ The group of buildings—the Abbey, Westminster Hall, the Houses of Parliament, the bridge beyond, the Westminster School—might be set off with prodigious effect were there one of real artistic instincts to undertake the task. Nothing, for instance, can be meaner or more ineffective than Palace Square with its statues. ”

“ Stable-boys and grooms are up already, carrying buckets of water; dogs are leaping and barking; when the sun lifts his head above the low Surrey hills and falls upon the wall and towers of the Palace, the narrow lanes are full of men slowly addressing themselves to the work of the day. Clear and bright against the sky stand the buildings; huddled together they are, certainly—it is not yet a time for architectural grouping, except in the design of an abbey, which is generally placed where there is room enough and to spare. Where there is the King there is an army ”

“ His heart was changed: the stately services of the minster, the rolling of the organ, the chanting of the monks, the splendor of the altar, the story of the Gospel, the legends and the acts of the Saints, the pilgrimage to Rome,—these things pleased him more than the clash of steel on shield, the war cry, and the glorious madness of the fight. The beginner of the old Palace was the great King Cnut the Dane.
We write under the shadow of the Abbey: the bells peal out over our heads; the organ swells and dies; within the walls are the coffins and the bones of dead kings and princes and nobles. ”

“ Westminster, though immune from other foes, suffered terribly from fires, which have robbed us of the greatest part of one of the most picturesque of palaces. Just after Edward I. had finished repairing his royal dwelling a huge fire broke out, so tremendous that the palace was rendered uninhabitable, obliging the King to accept the hospitality of York Place, the London house of the Archbishops of York. Edward II. rebuilt the palace, which remained the main royal residence until a disastrous fire in 1512 drove the monarchs away for ever. ”

“ We get out at a provisional boarded gate, which leads to the reporters’ gallery, walk through a court-yard, which is full of bricks and mortar, enter a gothic door to the left, mount a couple of flights of stairs, open a glass door, and enter a small room, in which there is a very large fire. This room, and the stairs and corridors, are lighted with gas, even at mid-day; for it is one among the practical beauties of Westminster Palace, that the working-rooms of the reporters have scarcely any daylight. ”

“ In this respect the Palace followed the practice of every castle and great house in the country; even in a college the first court is a survival of the Outer Bailly. Leave, also, an open space east of the wall from the Jewel House to the outer wall for the gardens and herbaries—perhaps, like the Abbey, the Palace had gardens in the reclaimed meadows outside. Then fill in the area between the King’s House and the river with other halls, houses, offices, galleries, wardrobes, and cloisters. ”

“ Paul’s, though that, too, will always remain one of the great memorial characteristics of the vast metropolis.
THE VICTORIA TOWER.
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Where one has so noble an edifice, it seems ungracious to repine; yet the loss of the older building was a misfortune for which nothing can compensate. It was nearly the only remaining portion of the Palace of Westminster originally founded by Edward the Confessor, and retained by our kings until Henry VIII. removed his palace to Whitehall. St. ”

“ In the extraordinary progress of decorative art during the last twenty years the work in the New Palace of Westminster may justly claim a large share of influence. Infinite pains were bestowed on every detail; in some cases it seemed, that the dignity of the building as a whole, rather than the absolute need or object of the particular part under consideration, was allowed to determine the care and elaboration to be bestowed upon it. ”

“ Outside the Palace, the road—there is now a road where there was once a marsh or shallow with a ford—is covered with an endless procession of those who make their way to the Palace and the Abbey with supplies. ”

“ Let us, however, consider what were the actual requirements of a Royal Palace under the Plantagenets. It will be seen very soon that this group of buildings could have formed only a very small portion of the whole Palace. It will also be found that the Palace grows in the mind as we consider it. At first the Court was itinerant. Edward the Confessor was constantly traveling into different parts of his realm: he kept every Christmas, except his last, at Gloucester; his Easter he kept at Winchester; he resided a good deal at Westminster ”