Democracy, weights and measures
The official name for the buildings of Parliament is the »Palace of Westminster« because a royal palace once stood there. It was built in the mid-11th century for King Edward the Confessor and remained a royal residence until 1529. The most impressive survivor of the medieval palace, Westminster Hall, dates from 1099 and was given its magnificent hammer-beam roof 300 years later. There is also a smaller, less well-known relic of the old Westminster Palace: the Jewel Tower.
This stone tower was constructed in about 1365 as a safe place to keep the precious robes, jewels, gold and silver of the royal treasury. Later it was the home of the parliamentary archive, and from the 1860s until 1938, it housed the Standards Department, the government body responsible for weights and measures, as its thick walls and the constant temperature inside were ideal for making exact measurements and keeping the standard weights.
Info
Address Abingdon Street, SW1P 3JX | Public Transport Westminster (Circle, District, Jubilee Line) | Hours April–Oct Mon–Sun 10am–5pm; Nov–March Sat, Sun 10am–4pm| Tip Parliament, including the magnificent House of Lords and Westminster Hall, is open for guided tours on Saturdays and Mon–Fri when Parliament is not sitting. See www.parliament.uk/visiting or tel. 020 7219 4114.
Today, the Jewel Tower is separated from the rest of the parliament by a busy road. It stands among lawns and the remains of a moat. The three-storey tower is well worth visiting for the exhibition Parliament Past and Present. The displays show the appearance of the old Palace of Westminster and St Stephen’s Chapel, where the House of Commons met, and tell of the construction of the present Houses of Parliament in the 19th century after a devastating fire in 1834. In times when it is easy to be cynical about politics, the part of the exhibition that outlines the long road to democracy is uplifting and encouraging. It is a sober and well-presented account of the first councils of nobles and the emergence of the House of Commons in the Middle Ages, the defeat of attempts to establish an absolute monarchy, the struggles for freedom of the press and votes for women – a history to be proud of, whatever the latest headlines from Westminster happen to be.
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