Jonathan Morrison
Renovating the Palace of Westminster — a gothic horror story
The multibillion-pound refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament is shaping up to be the most expensive yet. Jonathan Morrison takes a tour of its underbelly
We’ve seen what happened at Windsor Castle and Notre Dame and we shouldn’t need to be given a third warning,” says Sir Peter Bottomley, who has spent 44 years in the House of Commons. “It’s now essential to decant, because the Palace of Westminster is heading for a catastrophic collapse.”
It’s a stark warning from the country’s third longest-serving MP, but one that is echoed by everyone involved in the multibillion-pound project to refurbish and restore Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin’s neo-gothic masterpiece on the Thames, from architects to engineers to politicians.
A tour of the basement shows why they are worried. Quite apart from the presence of asbestos, some 240 miles of wiring snakes around steam, gas and water pipes — Victorian, postwar, modern — and is clearly a disaster waiting to happen. This is despite the 24/7 patrols and a new mist sprinkler system, somehow twisted into place among the conduits and cables. Then there’s the crumbling masonry, the corroded roofs, the frayed telephone connections, the leaking sewerage, the damp and rain, the vermin. And as recently as April, leaking water poured into the Commons chamber in the middle of a debate.
What can’t really be seen is the network of ventilation shafts that suck fresh air through the Elizabeth Tower and St Stephen’s Tower and circulate it through a couple of thousand risers to 1,100 rooms, up 96 staircases and into 31 lifts, before expelling it through the octagonal Central Tower. The brainchild of a Scottish physician, David Boswell Reid, this early steam-powered air conditioning, which takes up 20 per cent of the palace’s internal volume, was revolutionary in its day, but now poses an existential threat. The Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building, which burnt to the ground in June last year, had a similar system.
Since 2008 there have been at least 66 incidents at Westminster that could have caused a disastrous fire of the sort that destroyed the roof and spire of Notre Dame in Paris in April, much of Windsor Castle in 1992 and, indeed, the medieval palace that occupied the site in Westminster until 1834. The most serious of these incidents involved a halogen light toppling and setting part of the roof alight, but the blaze was spotted by a contractor before it could spread farther. The risk is only likely to increase as MPs and peers move out and the builders move in, even if there’s a commitment to doing as much of the “hot work” off-site as possible. Since proper compartmentalisation won’t be in place for some time yet, a spark could quickly become an inferno.
Andy Piper, the design director of the restoration, describes the task ahead as “reverse archaeology” because “services have just been installed on top of other services. It’s an absolute maze.” After six years of surveying the fabric, his team have concluded that the wrought-iron frame of the building is “fundamentally stable”, but that everything needs to be stripped to bare brick to ensure that there is no asbestos left. “Once we start taking things apart, we’re bound to find more and more. It’s not the sort of thing that can be done with parliament still functioning and all the security needed,” Piper says.
Westminster Hall roof (ADAM WATROBSKI/UK PARLIAMENT)
In February 2018 parliamentarians approved a “full decant”, during which they would move out, over a “partial decant”, whereby work takes place around some democratic business. Rolling works to restore the Unesco world heritage site with minimal disruption would have taken about 32 years and cost £5.7 billion, the accountancy firm Deloitte calculated in 2014, but a full decant should come in cheaper at £3.5 billion over six or seven years. About £60 million a year is being spent on patching it up while MPs and peers remain.
The project will start to hit its stride in October, when royal assent is given to the plan to establish an Olympic-style sponsor board and a subordinate body that will oversee and manage the work. But while this is relatively fast by government standards, a lot of issues remain. For a start, no one really believes that the cost will stay as low as £3.5 billion; a further £1.5 billion has been allocated for the refurbishment of the Northern Estate, comprising MPs’ and civil servants’ offices along the Victoria Embankment, including Portcullis House, which is above Westminster Tube station, and Richmond House, opposite the Cenotaph. Another £61 million has been spent on urgent repairs to the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben. In short it will probably be the most expensive restoration in British history by the time it is finished, it is hoped in 2033.
“It’s gone faster than we thought and whizzed through the Commons quickly, but you’d have to be a very brave person to claim there won’t be any problems,” says Liz Peace, the chairwoman of the sponsor board and a former chief executive of the British Property Federation. “We’ll only really know the cost when we put the business case to parliament in 2021 and ask them to decide exactly what they want from a range of options. Then it’ll need firm control.”
A specialist restores the woodwork at the House of Lords in 1951 (ALFRED HARRIS/TIMES)
There is still a lot to be decided, not least the level of disabled access. “We’re sure we can do better than the 17 per cent accessibility at present,” Peace says. “But it’s a grade I listed historic building, so there’s going to have to be some level of compromise. We should make it 100 per cent accessible in critical areas, of course, but maybe we can say the turrets on the roof don’t need to be.”
Peace also has ambitions to make the place more environmentally friendly, for instance through renewable energy and better fenestration to prevent heat loss from 4,000 windows, most of which don’t close properly. The team is already looking at installing a heat-exchange system that takes thermal energy from the Thames to heat the halls. Peace wants to spread the economic benefits too, distributing work to companies from around the country and training a new generation of craftsmen. That’s something she’s particularly keen to make progress on. “There’s no use deciding we need more stonemasons in 2026 when it takes years to apprentice them.”
Then there are other fine judgments to be made, such as how to restore the fabric without erasing all that history. As Julian Flannery, the lead architect, puts it: “We’re not really trying to take it back to a particular date — it’s been in a constant state of evolution for a thousand years. This isn’t like any other project and everything has to be considered carefully.” For instance, it has already been determined that the little marks made by the spurs of the Horse Guards on the Anston limestone walls during the state opening are to be preserved. As is the plaque to the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison that was placed by Tony Benn inside the cupboard where she spent the night during the 1911 census to claim the House of Commons as her address.
An angel on the palace exterior (ADAM WATROBSKI/UK PARLIAMENT)
Will it be worth those billions and billions? Bottomley seems to think so. “At £3.5 billion, it’s costing about a third of the smart meter programme,” he says. “But you can justify any price, because if you ask anyone coming to Britain what’s the one thing they want to see, it’s the Houses of Parliament, and just think what those visitors’ spending is worth to the country. It’s a national icon and there are both practical and symbolic reasons for maintaining it.”
Perhaps the biggest controversy involves the relocation of MPs and their staff. The Lords is due to move to the QEII conference centre on the other side of Parliament Square, but the Commons will head to Richmond House under a plan announced in May. When they arrive some time in the mid-2020s, the grade II* listed building, designed by William Whitfield, praised by the Prince of Wales and only completed in 1987, will be all but obliterated. Only the distinctive striated façade and a terrace of houses at the far end will be retained.
Most of Richmond House, the former Department of Health headquarters, will be replaced by a huge office complex designed by the architecture firm AHMM. It will contain a new debating chamber with traditional green benches. It is, according to one Labour frontbencher, “a missed opportunity to try something new at a time when politicians have never been held in lower esteem” and still looks too small to seat all 650 MPs at once. Replacing Richmond House will cost about £400 million.
The proposed design for the temporary chamber at Richmond House, by AHMM architects (ALLFORD HALL MONAGHAN MORRIS)
This part of the project has enraged heritage campaigners such as Save. The group has been pressing for an alternative, such as a temporary chamber erected in the Foreign Office, Treasury or the expansive atrium of Portcullis House, where the MPs have offices.
“We just haven’t seen the justification for this eye-wateringly expensive scheme,” said Henrietta Billings, the director of Save. “It’s been a very opaque process, and when you’re spending £400 million of taxpayers’ money to destroy an outstanding example of modern architecture you might expect it to be transparent. Replacing a building that’s 30 years old is also an extraordinary waste of resources when climate change is such an issue — it’s equivalent to the carbon emitted by 15,000 flights to New York — and parliament should be setting a better example.”
Peace, 66, is unrepentant. She believes that now politicians have reached a decision the critical thing is to get the project fully under way. “The other alternatives were thrashed to death,” she says. “Of course we regret the waste inherent in demolishing Richmond House, but you can’t have an omelette without breaking eggs.
“Notre Dame has made a big impact on people’s perceptions of the restoration of parliament and why it’s necessary, so now we just need to get on with it. As it is, I’ll be 85 when it’s finished.”
The blaze at Windsor Castle in 1992 (REX/SHUTTERSTOCK)
Three controversial conservation projects
Windsor Castle
A 15-hour fire in November 1992 destroyed nine state rooms and damaged 100 others. The 1.5 million gallons of water used to extinguish the blaze also contributed to the damage. Windsor (in common with other occupied royal palaces) wasn’t insured, and controversy raged for months as to whether the Queen or taxpayers should pay for restoration. In the end, a compromise was reached: the £37 million restoration programme was largely financed by opening Buckingham Palace to the public each summer.
York Minster
Few cathedrals have been as knocked about, restored and knocked about again as York’s great gothic minster. An arson attack in 1829 and another fire in 1840 (accidental this time) left the cathedral roofless. The Victorians patched it up, but a 1967 survey revealed that the central tower was close to collapse. An urgent public appeal raised £2 million to strengthen the foundations. Then, in 1984, a serious fire (probably caused by lightning) broke out in the south transept and firefighters collapsed the burning roof to save the cathedral. Repairs took four years and cost £2.25 million. Another £23 million has been spent on a ten-year project (completed last year) to renovate the east front.
Glasgow School of Art
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Edwardian masterpiece survived its first 100 years pretty well, but its second century began disastrously. In 2014 a huge fire, apparently caused by gases from a canister of expanding foam, destroyed 90 per cent of the original school. A meticulous £35 million restoration project was started, only for a second fire to sweep through the school (partially rebuilt, but not yet fitted with sprinklers) in June 2018. Its cause is yet to be officially determined. The school’s board has said that it will be rebuilt again, but press reports this week claimed that 70 teachers have quit since the second fire.
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