Palace of Westminster
The British Parliament burned down in 1834. The competition for the new building required the Gothic or Elizabethan style, and Barry won with a symmetrical plan that Pugin clothed in a profusion of Gothic detail. The clock tower housing Big Ben became a symbol of the whole country.
On the evening of 16 October 1834 the old Palace of Westminster was destroyed by a fire that started when old tally sticks from the Exchequer were being burned. A new palace was needed, and the competition of 1835–1836 required the Gothic or Elizabethan style, since these were considered national. Charles Barry won with a clear, symmetrical plan, and he engaged the young Augustus Pugin, one of the foremost experts of his day on medieval Gothic. Construction began in 1840 and went on for some thirty years. The building was given a structure with iron in the floors and roofs and was faced with limestone from Yorkshire. The work dragged on and costs rose steeply, giving rise to constant disputes between the architect, Parliament and the government.
The palace is a long building along the Thames with two chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, on either side of a central lobby. From this, corridors lead out into a system of courtyards, and the palace has more than a thousand rooms. At the south end stands the Victoria Tower, which houses the parliamentary archives, and at the north end the clock tower with the great bell Big Ben. Westminster Hall, dating from the 11th century, survived the fire and was incorporated into the palace; its hammerbeam roof of the 1390s is one of the great timber structures of the Middle Ages. Pugin designed not only the details of the façades but also wallpapers, tiles, stained glass, furniture, inkstands and door furniture. The House of Lords, where the throne stands, became the richest room in the palace, with gilding and colour in a decorative scheme that Pugin drew from the late Middle Ages.
The limestone soon proved to weather in London’s polluted air and has had to be replaced on a large scale. During the bombing of 1941 the House of Commons chamber was destroyed, and it was rebuilt to designs by Giles Gilbert Scott in a simplified Gothic, completed in 1950. In 2012 the clock tower was renamed the Elizabeth Tower, and it underwent a lengthy restoration that was completed in 2022. The entire palace now needs a thorough renovation of its services and fabric. Westminster became a model for what a parliament building could look like, and Gothic Revival parliaments were built in Budapest and Ottawa, among other places. The Gothic Revival also spread to Sweden, where in the later 19th century it shaped many church buildings and restorations of medieval cathedrals, including Helgo Zettervall’s work in Uppsala and Lund.