Burning of Parliament
The Palace of Westminster was first used as a royal residence by Canute the Great in the 11th century. In 1295 Westminster was the venue for the Model Parliament, the first English representative assembly. In 1512 a fire destroyed the royal palace complex and Henry VIII moved the royal residence to the nearby Palace of Whitehall. The palace has since been categorised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, of outstanding universal value.
About Burning of Parliament in brief
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. 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 palace has since been categorised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, of outstanding universal value. In 1295 Westminster was the venue for the Model Parliament, the first English representative assembly, summoned by Edward I. The House of Lords met in the medieval hall of the Queen’s Chamber, before moving to the Lesser Hall in 1801. Over the three centuries from 1547 the palace was enlarged and altered, becoming a warren of wooden passages and stairways. St Stephen’s Chapel remained largely unchanged until 1692 when Sir Christopher Wren, at the time the Master of the King’s Works, was instructed to make structural alterations. He lowered the roof, removed the stained glass windows, put in a new floor and covered the original gothic architecture with wood panelling. He also added galleries from which the public could watch proceedings. The result was described by one visitor to the chamber as ‘dark, gloomy, and badly ventilated’ and so small that when an important debate occurred the members were really to be pitied.
By 1834 the palace had been further developed, firstly in the middle of the eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century by John Wyatt and Sir John Stone. By the end of the 20th century the complex had been developed further, first by James Wyatt and John Stone, and then by John Vardy in the mid-19th century. The complex is now the home to the House of Commons, the Lords Chamber, the Painted Chamber and the official residences of the Speaker and the Clerk of the Commons. It is also the seat of the European Court of Human Rights, which has a seat in the Palace of Holyrood, which was built in the 12th century to house the Court of Justice and the Supreme Court of Justices of the Peace. It was also the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the opening of the Houses of Parliament in 1852. The Palace of Parliament was first used as a royal residence by Canute the Great in the 11th century, and later by William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry III and Henry IV. In 1512 a fire destroyed the royal palace complex and Henry VIII moved the royal residence to the nearby Palace of Whitehall. By 1332 the barons and burgesses and citizens began to meet separately, and by 1377 the two bodies were entirely detached. By 1245 the King’s throne was present in the palace, which signified that the building was at the centre of English royal administration. During his reign he called sixteen parliaments, which sat either in the White Chamber.
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This page is based on the article Burning of Parliament published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
