Welcome to the project blog! Here you will find short articles created by members of the project team detailing new research, elements of the technical development process and our participation at conferences and events.
It was Speaker Henry Addington who took over the former St Stephen's College buildings in 1794 and turned them into an official residence for the Speaker of the House of Commons. This post gives a brief introduction to this important but neglected statesman.
The offices of the Exchequer of Receipt within the Palace of Westminster were a hive of administrative activity but they also provided social space. The Lord Treasurer's suite of rooms doubled as a dining room, frequented by Exchequer officials for meals provided on the Exchequer's dime. This post examines where the officers ate, what was on the menu and the place of these meals within the administrative routine of the Exchequer.
What was it like to be a servant at the Speaker's House? In this post, we examine the extraordinary 'below stairs' rooms in which the Speakers' domestic servants lived and worked.
In early modern England outbreaks of infectious disease were a part of life. Plague, influenza and the mysterious sweating sickness broke out in varying degrees of severity throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has naturally garnered interest in past epidemics and brought the realities of living with infectious disease into sharp relief.
Recent events in the USA have shown that the stylistic debate around public buildings remains highly contentious. In this post, we explore the decades-long struggle between advocates of Classical and Gothic architecture to decide the style of the Palace of Westminster.
The Bartlett and European Institute at UCL's Parliament Buildings conference was held online last month, bringing together architects, political scientists, historians and anthropologists united by a common interest in the relationship between parliament buildings and political culture. The second half of the conference will take place on 18-19 February 2021 where we will be presenting our research on the Auditor and Speaker’s House at St Stephen’s.
How do you research a building like St Stephen’s Chapel? Where would you have found Yorkshire kerseys and Padua serge in the old House of Commons? In this post, former St Stephen’s Chapel project assistant Simon Neal discusses the manuscript evidence underpinning our research on the medieval royal Chapel and pre-1834 Commons chamber, and some of the stories of places and people at Westminster that it has enabled us to tell.
Between 1794 and 1834, the Speaker of the House of Commons took over most of the former buildings of St Stephen's College and remodelled them to create a lavish official residence. However, after the infamous fire which destroyed most of the old Palace of Westminster, the Speaker's 'palace within a Palace' was swept away. In this post, we introduce this almost-forgotten building and explain why we are now trying to rescue it from the depths of obscurity.
In this guest post Jonathan Hanley, member of Stile Antico and former St Stephen's project assistant, reflects on his time at St Stephen's and the power of music to evoke the past.
2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of Sir Charles Barry's Palace of Westminster. To mark the occasion, we consider the impact the old House of Commons had on its successors after 1834.
