The chamber for the Commons in the Houses of Parliament, which is a popular synonym for the present Palace of Westminster, is here in the centre line of the building that replaced the old Palace after that had been severely damaged by fire in October 1834. Star Chamber Court is to its west, Commons' Court to its east and Speaker's Court and Big Ben to its north. Its history has not been serene. Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) won a competition for the design of the new Palace that we now see and then had the determination, diplomatic skills and stamina to see it largely completed. The MP's moved into the Chamber that Barry had built for them in 1850. They promptly moved back to their temporary accommodation in the old House of Lords because they didn't like it. That was despite the continuous involvement of committees of members in the supervision, meaning delay, of the development. Barry had had to respond almost daily to some parliamentarian, civil servant or committee. Changes to their Chamber, which Barry considered vandalised his design, were made by him over three years on the instruction of the members. So, that major element of the interior which the MP's are inclined to call 'Barry's Chamber' is the least his. This tenuous link with the original concept was further weakened by the necessity for the reconstruction of the Chamber following bomb damage in May 1941. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) was commissioned to effect this work whilst following 'Barry's' design as closely as possible. This he did of course do but nonetheless he introduced telling differences in the result which was completed in 1950.
The United Kingdom does have a large number of legislators in the lower house as well as the upper, by however much the latter may have been reduced recently. But, the MP's in both 1835 and the 1940's were most insistent, latterly led by Churchill, on the need to have an essentially intimate space to work in. (This is also represented as a requirement to be less embarrassed by large areas of empty space about the few members who are there for most of the time.) Thus, although there have been substantially more than 600 MP's since early in the 19th century, the seating provides for just 427 as it did in Barry's Chamber. However Scott did change the detail of the place to make it lighter, and less pungently Victorian Gothic. There was also a change to the galleries allowing more seats for the press and the public. Prior to 1834, and since 1547, the Commons had met in what had been Saint Stephen's Chapel. (Saint Stephen's Hall in the new Palace delineates that.) Their debating chamber for those three centuries had been the main chapel and their lobby had been the ante-chapel. That gave them a space that was a little less than sixty feet long and thirty feet wide for their confabulations. Barry and Scott provided, at the Members insistence, 68ft by 45ft 6ins with five rather than four rows of straight green benches on each side. (In the Saint Stephen's chamber the benches had curved round behind the Speaker's chair because that chair was placed at the front of the altar step.) There is a gargantuan plethora of custom governing the procedures of the Commons deriving from tenuous connections with a myriad of features from its history. As slight examples: members bow to the Speaker as to the altar; they raise a hat to indicate a wish to raise a point of order because in buildings as cold as a monastic chapel it was necessary to wear a hat to keep warm and you only raised it to attract attention; it is out of order to step over the lines drawn between the front benches because that takes you within a sword's length of the opposition (although members for several centuries had to leave their swords outside the chamber on what are now used as umbrella racks); excepting the Speaker, one member addressing another must not name him or her but use the phrase 'the Member for...' and name the constituency because they are there as representatives of their constituencies rather then in their own name, etc., etc. Most important of all their customs is possibly the bar on the entry to the floor of the house of anyone other than a member or an officer of the House. Only they may be involved with the deliberations in this very privileged place.

O/S Co-ords:3028.7953
Source(s):

Parliament House - The Chambers of the House of Commons

Westminster Palace and Parliament