Westminster Hall provided a particularly fine historical venue for President Obama’s talk, as he noted.
The Hall dates back to the 11th Century: it was completed in time for William Rufus to celebrate Whitsun on 29 May 1099. It provided a place for feasting and receiving foreign heads of state. The king’s throne was on the dais at the southern end (facing you in the picture). Monarchs were seated here for the coronation breakfast and from 1189 to 1821 the hall was used for coronation banquets following the coronation service in Westminster Abbey.
The Hall became more regularly used for judicial purposes, with the first judges sitting there by 1178. Judges sat on stone benches, hence the name. Sir Thomas More was tried in the Hall (as portrayed in the film A Man for all Seasons), as was Charles I; both were tried for and convicted of treason. The courts continued to sit in or adjacent to the Hall until 1883.
There was a major remodelling of the Hall between 1393 and 1401, with stone towers being added to the north facade. A new roof was added, the hammer beam construction being seen as a masterpiece of medieval English carpentry. It remains an amazing sight.
Nowadays, the Hall is used for the occasional exhibition as well as for major events such as an address by a visiting dignitary, such as Nelson Mandela, the Pope and Barack Obama, and for lying in state of monarchs, Queen Consorts, and two statesmen – Gladstone and Churchill. The most recent lying in state was that of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002. It is also now the principal entrance for visitors to the Palace.
I was able to brush up on my knowledge of the Hall because most of the detail was printed on the programme for President Obama’s address – and we did have rather a long time to occupy ourselves prior to his arrival. The doors to the Hall were open at 1.30 p.m. and the President was not scheduled to arrive until 3.30. Still, it was well worth waiting for.
What a fantastic piece of architecture!
What percentage of the entire building does it sominate?
*Dominate
[Sorry about that]
syst5555: Not sure in the physical sense, though in terms of aescetic appreciation it ranks alongside the Royal Gallery as the most magnificent part of the Palace. They are also the two places that dominate when it comes to inviting a visiting head of state to speak to members of the two Houses.
No doubt Westminster Hall has been a centrepiece for internal-governance and international-diplomacy confluences, amongst Britain’s growing ‘downwards-and-outwards’ geographical map of lesser meeting-places right down to local neighbourhood levels, for many centuries.
The masterpiece of timber carpentry I have no doubt should stand for evermore as a spiritual-focus for the Nation;
as should stonework.
I can go into any old English church and ‘see and feel’ the spiritual presence
“So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost a while”.
Especially and as if in private, I ‘meet’ my father there in the great stone columns; my mother in the altar-cloths and flower-arrangements; and many individual family, friends, mentors, and discerning-educators, in the stained-glass windows and inscriptions.
Today we also need spacious, modern low-maintenance-cost and electronic-communication-enhanced, community meeting places for every kind and level of people.
But whilst being temporally-necessary, and for our future-wellbeing we shall need to have frequent very small quantities of good-quality food and drink, rather than feastings and banquets, within the latter,
such modernity might never hold those ‘spiritual’ elements that the ancient buildings preserve.
I muse that the ‘Lords Temporal’ have the principal task of minding our material-business needs, whereas the ‘Lords Spiritual’ have the duty of preserving and appropriately communicating our more historical and still-positivising ‘spiritual’ roots – similarly to as it were ‘lighting-up’ such still-living symbols as the hammer beam construction, and the local historic-edifice’s great stone columns… ?
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Spectacular architecture and a tribute to our history, but, very cold, especially in winter.
maude elwes: Oh yes, it certainly gets cold.
milesjsd: The timber roof is certainly magnificent and a great tribute to the craftsmen of the day. I marvel at it whenever I take visitors round the Palace. One never ceases to be in awe of the splendour of the Hall.
The Hall is now used far more than it was prior to 1997, and the new use of the side chamber for full meetings of the HofC in the morning.
I m slightly disappointed at the vast flow of people through the hall but it must be necessary for the full security measures to function well.
Until recently I has hesitated to sit and look about me, rather passing through to the
committee rooms, but now I have spent some time sitting on the stone seats at the side there and taking it all in.
It is splendid, and I wonder whether the remodelling included the raising or lowering of the floor at any time or whether we are walking where people have trod ever since William Rufus?
I have never been to Rome (shame on me!) but some of the early AD stone work is used even today as part of modern buildings, which is rather more previous than anything in London now!
I don’t know whether the HofC committee room has a name of its own since it is just called “Westminster Hall” on the agenda, or was.
St Clement Dane’s crypt was once a Roman rubbish dump!
Gareth Howell: It is certainly much more used now than it used to be, which I think is very much to be welcomed. The committee room used for ‘Sittings in Westminster Hall’ is the Grand Committee Room. The use of Sittings in Westminster Hall has proved much more successful than many originally anticipated.
Good debate about reform of the Lords between David Steel and Helena Kennedy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/04/conversation-elected-house-of-lords
I do support the steel bill on HOL reform and i enclose a link to an interview he gave i think for the Westminster Hour. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_westminster_hour/9505312.stm.
However on retirement i do think the option should be there but it should not be used simply to push old peers out of the house. Many of the older peers have a lot to give to the house. It should be entirely voluntary and older peers should feel pressured to take it.