This area provides an underground car park for those working in the adjoining Palace of Westminster. It cost more to build than the complete construction and furnishing of that Palace by Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) a century before when he replaced the buildings damaged by fire in 1834. It is substantially less in extent than the yard, or 'Outer Ward' of the palace which Henry VIII (1491-1547) vacated, also after a fire, in 1512. The north wall of the Ward, in which a clock tower may have been placed in approximately the same position as Big Ben, extended west to a gateway in the return wall. That followed a line to the Jewel Tower, at its southern end, passing just east of Henry VII's chapel and St Margaret's Church. The eastern, river side of the Ward was filled with the Star Chamber. The Speaker's accommodation and Court are now sited there. On the southern boundary of the Ward from the north front of the great, medieval Westminster Hall, which is now as it was then, there were offices, possibly of the exchequer, as far as an inner gateway. That led into what was then known as the Green Yard along the side the great Hall (covering what would now be, largely, Saint Margaret Street). In the present New Palace Yard there is a piece of statuary commemorating the silver jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977.

O/S Co-ords:3021.7951
Source(s):

Westminster Palace and Parliament