The main lines of the plan will be easily discerned, suggested as they are by the nature of the site, the position of Westminster Hall, and the duality of the object of the building. The first and most important is the line of public approach through Westminster Hall. At the end of the hall there is an ascent by a grand flight of steps to a landing under the great window (to which there is a shorter public communication through St. Margaret’s porch, from Old Palace Yard), and thence by another flight into St. Stephen’s Hall. This hall is ninety-five feet in length, twenty-nine in width, and forty-three in height to the pitch of the groined roof. It contains several statues of celebrated statesmen, most of which are very beautiful as works of art, though executed on so large a scale as to be detrimental to the effect of the hall. It is intended to cover with appropriate frescoes the panels and the large arched recesses at the end of the hall.
An archway at the east end gives entrance to the central hall, octagon on plan and vaulted. Its vault is the largest octagon vault known, in which a central pillar is not used, and the lantern is sustained by a cone of brickwork rising above the vault.
From this point the public approaches diverge. To the right and left corridors open into the lobbies of the Houses of Lords and Commons. At the east end another corridor opens into the “witness hall,” from which access is had on the principal floor to the Peers’ libraries and committee-rooms and the Commons’ libraries, which, with a central “conference room,” occupy the whole curtain of the river front; a staircase leads to the upper floor, containing another long range of committee-rooms.[104]
The next great line is that of the royal approach. The royal carriage drives under the great Victoria tower, and the sovereign ascending the royal staircase enters the robing room, and thence emerges into the “royal gallery,” a room one hundred and ten feet long, forty-five in width, and forty-five in height, with panelled ceiling. This gallery is open to the public at the opening and prorogation of Parliament, and was intended to be the entrance to the House of Peers. For the convenience of the peers an anteroom, the “Prince’s Chamber,” was added, through which the sovereign passes to the throne end of the House. Somewhat small in itself, and accordingly ornamented with small and delicate detail, it has been much injured by the large statue of Her Majesty, with the figures of Justice and Mercy flanking her throne, designed by John Gibson, Esq., R.A., and placed in this chamber.
The two Houses are approached, either from the central hall, or by private entrances for the members. The private entrance to the House of Peers is in the centre of the Old Palace Yard front, and there is another from the south-western angle of St. Stephen’s Hall. The entrances to the House of Commons are by the Star Chamber and Cloister Courts, and by an archway on the western side of Westminster Hall. Each House has its lobbies, corridors, and refreshment rooms, with ready access to its committee-rooms and libraries.
The two Houses themselves are of very different character. The House of Peers, as being, not only one chamber of the legislature, but the presence chamber of the sovereign, is of considerable size (ninety feet in length, forty-five in width, and forty-five in height), and decorated with lavish magnificence. The House of Commons, not presenting the same characteristics, is smaller in size (seventy-five feet in length, forty-five feet in width, and forty-one feet to the central line of the ceiling), while it provides much larger accommodation in the galleries and lobbies, and its decoration, though careful and elaborate, is less magnificent in character. The official residences are, of course, grouped round the Houses to which they are appendages. The offices of the Lord Great Chamberlain are on the south front, the residences of the Usher of the Black Rod, and Librarian of the House of Peers, at the south end of the river front, and that of the Serjeant-at-arms on the Old Palace Yard front. At the north end of the river front we have the Speaker’s house, and the houses of the Serjeant-at-arms, the Librarian and the Chief Clerk on the north front and the front to New Palace Yard.
The plan generally, though having great intricacy in detail, an intricacy increased by constant variation of requirements, and by the elaborate ventilating system originally imposed on the architect, is yet perfectly simple and practical in its main lines. He adopted it from the first as the only one which could be effective or satisfactory, and never wavered in his approval of its great features; for it showed that characteristic which has been noticed in all his works, the preservation of the leading principle of “stateliness,” subordinating, often with great skill, variety of requirement and of contrivance to a general unity and repose in effect. And, although there are inevitable defects in detail, such as difficulty in obtaining sufficient light in some parts of the building, miscalculation of the amount of accommodation required, &c., yet experience appears to have confirmed his opinion and justified his confidence in the leading principles of his plan.
The first grand external feature is undoubtedly the great line of the river front, which has been noticed above, and is illustrated, so far as the scale will allow, by the view given. The other great front, the west or land front, has never as yet been presented to the eye as a whole. It is interrupted by the law-courts, the days of which appear now to be numbered. When they are removed, it is to be hoped that due care will be taken to substitute some front harmonizing with the building, on which the present erection forms an excrescence. In any case this front will present a more broken line, which will probably, considering the height of the building, conduce to beauty and picturesqueness of effect. One extension of it, shown on the plan, has never yet been made; for New Palace Yard, which Sir Charles hoped to form into a great architectural quadrangle, is now to be enclosed merely by an ornamental railing.
The other important features are the three great towers. Of these it is to be remembered that the central tower was an after-thought, necessitated by arrangements over which the architect had no control; otherwise it is possible that, as has been suggested, it would have been so enlarged as to form a principal feature of the design. It has been a subject of some surprise, that the general principle of symmetry followed in the plan and river front, has not been preserved in the case of the two original towers; but from the very beginning of the design this was otherwise arranged. The architect probably regarded each as an almost independent feature, likely to group not with the symmetry of the river front, but with the necessarily broken line of the land front. In their design they present a marked contrast, massiveness and grandeur being the characteristic of the Victoria tower, lightness and elegance of the clock-tower. Each has its admirers. It is perhaps generally thought that the clock-tower, from the smallness of its detail, harmonizes better with the adjacent front, while the Victoria tower, magnificent in itself, would have tended less to dwarf the rest of the building, had it stood almost independent of it, connected only by some grand cloister.
Such is a brief notice of the actual features of the building. The task of criticism must be left to others. At first very greatly praised, it was for a time somewhat recklessly condemned. Already it is clear that it is taking the position due to it. Critics of very opposite schools show their appreciation, both of the difficulties of the task assigned to its architect, and the degree of success with which that object has been attained. Mr. Fergusson, in a vehement anti-Gothic chapter, regretting that the style of the building was to be Gothic at all, concludes that, “taking it all in all, it is perhaps the most successful attempt to apply mediæval architecture to modern civic purposes which has yet been carried out.” Mr. Scott, in his work on Gothic architecture, does not hesitate to speak of it as, “on the whole, the most successful of our modern public buildings.” An article in the ‘Saturday Review,’ immediately after Sir C. Barry’s death, written in kindliness of feeling, but written also with care and discrimination in criticism, expresses pretty accurately the verdict of the educated public taste. “In spite of the shortcomings, which just critical taste or captious antagonism can find in the details and the mass of the work,—in spite of the disadvantage of the primary idea of the style in which it is built having been revolutionised in the course of its progress—yet the Palace of Westminster stands alone and matchless in Europe among the architectural monuments of this busy age. From the border of the Thames, from St. James’s Park or Waterloo Place, from Piccadilly or the bridge across the Serpentine, the spectacle of that great square tower, of the central needle, and far away of the more fantastic beffroi—all grouping at every step in some new combination—stamps the whole building as the massive conception of a master-mind.”[105]