View source for Westminster Hall

{{Short description|Medieval great hall in London, England}}
[[File:Westminster Hall interior.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|The interior of the hall]]
'''Westminster Hall''' is a medieval [[great hall]] which forms part of the [[Palace of Westminster]] in London. It was built in 1097 for [[William II of England|William II]], and at that time was one of the largest halls in Europe. It is particularly notable for its [[hammerbeam roof]], which was commissioned for [[Richard II of England|Richard II]] in 1393 and built by the royal carpenter, [[Hugh Herland]]. At the same time the rest of the hall was remodelled by the master mason [[Henry Yevele]]. The hall survived the [[Burning of Parliament|fire of 1834]] and bombing in [[World War II]] and, in spite of various restorations, has maintained its medieval structure and many of its features.

The hall has served a variety of ceremonial and administrative functions throughout its history. From the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries it was home to the courts of [[Court of King's Bench (England)|King's Bench]], [[Court of Chancery|Chancery]], and [[Court of Common Pleas (England)|Common Pleas]]. It was the scene of important state trials, including those of [[Thomas More]],[[Guy Fawkes]] and [[Trial of Charles I|King Charles I]]. Banquets and royal entertainments were hosted in the hall, with the last [[Coronation of the British Monarch#After-celebrations|coronation banquet]] being that of [[George IV]] in 1821. Since the twentieth century, the hall has been the venue for the [[Lying in state|lyings in state]] of [[State funerals in the United Kingdom|state funerals]]. It is used for special addresses by Parliament to the monarch, and is on rare occasions the venue for [[List of people who have addressed both houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom|joint addresses]] to the two chambers of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]].

==Early history==
Westminster Hall, which is the oldest surviving building within the Palace of Westminster, was built as a [[Great Hall]] for [[William II of England|William II]]. The foundations were laid in 1097 and the building was completed by 1099. At that time it was the largest hall in England, and possibly Europe.<ref name=G11>{{cite web |date=May 2009 |title=The Palace of Westminster |url=http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/g11.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161025225920/https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/G11.pdf |archive-date=25 October 2016 |access-date=5 August 2010 |work=House of Commons Information Office}}</ref> During its early history, the main use of the hall was for feasts and banquets. William II held the [[Whitsun]] feast in the hall on its completion in 1099. The earliest coronation banquets were those of [[Henry the Young King|Prince Henry]] in 1170 and [[Richard I|Richard I of England]] in 1189. There were banquets when the [[Magnum Concilium|king's Great Council]] met, and to mark other important occasions. [[Henry III of England|Henry III]] provided feasts for poor people in the hall, the only king to have done so.<ref name=Gerhold>{{cite book |first=Dorian|last=Gerhold|title=Westminster Hall|date=1999|publisher=James & James (Publishers) Ltd|location=London|isbn=0-907-383-890}}</ref>{{rp|13}} The king's Great Council usually met in a smaller hall when at Westminster, but the Great Hall was the location for a show of strength, as when war was declared against France in 1337.{{r|Gerhold|pp=14}}

In 1215, [[Magna Carta]] stated that common pleas should be heard in a fixed location, which was normally Westminster Hall. The  [[Court of King's Bench (England)|Court of King's Bench]] and the [[Court of Common Pleas (England)|Court of Common Pleas]] were established as separate courts, with the former still following the king until the early fifteenth century, when it joined the Court of Common Pleas in Westminster Hall.{{r|Gerhold|pp=42-43}} The hall was also used for state trials: the trial of [[William Wallace]] took place there in 1305.{{r|Gerhold|pp=53}} By the end of the thirteenth century, merchants were selling their wares from booths and stalls in the hall.{{r|Gerhold|pp=50}}

In 1385, [[Richard II of England|Richard II]] commissioned statues of thirteen kings from [[Edward the Confessor]] to himself for the hall. Six of them were placed in niches on the south wall and have since remained there.{{r|Gerhold|pp=17}} A new roof and renovations were commissioned in 1393. The work was carried out under the supervision of carpenter [[Hugh Herland]] and masons [[Henry Yevele]] and Walter Walton.{{r|Gerhold|pp=18}} The walls of the hall were refaced and a [[cornice]], a [[Belt course|string-course]] with carvings of the king's emblems such as a white hart, [[Corbels|corbels]], [[Tracery|traceried]] windows and [[Flying buttress|flying buttresses]] were added. Oak timber for the new hammerbeam roof was cut from royal forests in [[Hampshire]], [[Surrey]] and [[Hertfordshire]] and brought to Westminster by teams of horses, with the last part of the journey by water. The hammer beams were decorated with twenty-six carved angels.{{r|Gerhold|pp=19-20}} Two towers and a pinnacle were added to the north facade, but the work was incomplete when Richard II was deposed in Westminster Hall in 1398; the work was continued by [[Henry IV of England|Henry IV]], who was crowned in the hall.{{r|Gerhold|pp=24}}

==Tudors and Stuarts==
Royal feasts and celebrations continued to be held in Westminster Hall under the early [[House of Tudor|Tudors]]. When [[Catharine of Aragon]] arrived in England to marry [[Arthur, Prince of Wales|Prince Arthur]] lavish entertainments, or "disguisings", were staged in the hall, accompanied by [[jousting]] in [[New Palace Yard]]. The last feast, except for coronation feasts, to be held in the hall was at Christmas 1549.{{r|Gerhold|pp=29}}

The hall continued to accommodate the Court of King's Bench and the Court of Common Pleas. They were joined by the [[Court of Chancery]] when it became a separate court in the fifteenth century. The King's Bench and Chancery sat in opposite corners of the south end of the hall, while the Common Pleas was situated at the north end.{{r|Gerhold|pp=42-43}} State trials held in the Hall included those of [[Thomas More]] (1535),[[John Fisher]] (1535), [[Guy Fawkes]] (1606), the [[Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford|Earl of Strafford]] (1641), 
[[Trial of Charles I|King Charles I]] (1649), and the [[Seven Bishops]] (1688).{{r|Gerhold|pp=53-57}} There were still shops in the hall in the seventeenth century; [[Samuel Pepys]] described buying books and items of clothing there in his diary in the 1660s.{{r|Gerhold|pp=50-51}}

==18th and 19th centuries==
[[File:George_IV_coronation_banquet 1821.jpg|alt=Painting|thumb|upright=1.3|The coronation banquet of George IV in 1821]]
Restorations undertaken in the 1740s included the insertion of props inside the Hall to support the roof, and the replacement of lead on the roof with Westmorland slates. The shops were removed from the Hall in 1780, the walls refaced, and the floor raised to reduced damp and flooding. In 1819-22, architect [[John Soane|Sir John Soane]] rebuilt the decaying north front, following instructions to keep to the style of Richard II's hall.{{r|Gerhold|pp=53-7}} In 1739, a [[Gothic architecture|Gothic]] screen, designed by [[William Kent]], was built to enclose the courts of the King's Bench and Chancery, which were later roofed over, while in 1740 the Court of Common Pleas was moved to a new courtroom to the west of the hall. In 1826, the courts of the King's Bench and Chancery moved into new courts built by Soane to the west of the hall, with the hall serving as an antechamber.{{r|Gerhold|pp=44-45}} In 1882, the courts were moved to the new [[Royal Courts of Justice]] building in the [[Strand, London|Strand]] and the old ones were demolished.{{r|Gerhold|pp=45}}

State trials held in the Hall during the eighteenth century included those Henry Sacheverell (1710), the Scottish Lords involved in [[Jacobite rising of 1715]] (1716) and the [[Jacobite rising of 1745]] (1746-47), [[Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers|Earl Ferrars]] (1760), and the bigamist [[Elizabeth Pierrepont, Duchess of Kingston-upon-Hull|Duchess of Kingston]] (1776). The [[impeachment of Warren Hastings]] was heard in the Hall in 1788-95, and that of [[Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville|Viscount Melville]] in 1806.{{r|Gerhold|pp=57-59}} The last coronation banquet was that of [[George IV]] in 1821. His successor, [[William IV]], deemed it too expensive, and the custom was not restored by any later monarchs.{{r|Gerhold|pp=34-35}} 

On 16 October 1834, the Palace of Westminster was largely destroyed by a [[Burning of Parliament|fire]] that was started by the careless burning of tally sticks in a heating furnace below the chamber of the [[House of Lords]]. The fire was fought during the evening and night by parish and insurance company fire engines, and the private London Fire Engine Establishment, led by [[James Braidwood]], with the help of hundreds of volunteers. Braidwood concentrated on saving the hall, which, although protected by its thick stone walls, was vulnerable on account of the wooden roof, and it survived the fire largely intact.<ref>{{HistoryofParliament |Modern |last1=Shenton |first1=Caroline|title=The fire of 1834 |url=https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/periods/modern/fire-1834 |accessdate=19 January 2025 }}</ref> When [[Charles Barry|Sir Charles Barry]] was rebuilding the ruined Palace of Westminster, he incorporated changes to the south end of the hall.{{r|Gerhold|pp=64-65}}

==20th and 21st centuries==
The hall continued to be used for ceremonial purposes during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There were royal occasions when the two Houses of Parliament presented addresses to the monarch, for example at [[Elizabeth II]]'s [[Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II|Silver Jubilee]] (1977), [[Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II|Golden Jubilee]] (2002) and [[Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II|Diamond Jubilee]] (2012), and the [[accession of Charles III]] (2022).<ref name=HS>{{cite web|url=https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications/data/addresses-to-both-houses-of-parliament|title=Addresses to both Houses of Parliament|date=14 July 2025|work=Hansard Society}}</ref> There have also been addresses on important anniversaries, for example, the 300th anniversary of the [[Glorious Revolution]] (1988) and the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe (1995).{{r|Gerhold|pp=81}} It is considered a rare privilege for a foreign leader to be invited to address both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. Since the Second World War, the only leaders to have done so have been French president [[Charles de Gaulle]] in 1960, South African president [[Nelson Mandela]] in 1996, [[Pope Benedict XVI]] in 2010, U.S. president [[Barack Obama]] in 2011, [[Burma|Burmese]] opposition leader [[Aung San Suu Kyi]] in 2012, and [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] president [[Volodymyr Zelenskyy]] in 2023.<ref name=HS/> Although the last coronation banquet was that of George IV in 1821, lunches were held in the hall after the coronations in 1911, 1937 and 1953.{{r|Gerhold|pp=35}}

The first [[lying-in-state]] to take place in Westminster Hall was that of [[William Ewart Gladstone|William Gladstone]] in 1898.{{r|Gerhold|pp=57-59}} The hall continued to be used for lying-in-state, usually for sovereigns and their consorts, but also for the victims of the [[R101|R101 airship]] in 1930 and for [[Winston Churchill]] in 1965, when an estimated one million people paid their respects.{{r|Gerhold|pp=75-76}} When [[Elizabeth II]] lay in state in September 2022, about 250,000 people filed past the coffin, which resulted in the delamination of the Yorkstone floor.<ref>{{cite web |last=Jones |first=Tim |date=29 November 2022 |title=Mourners filing past the Queen's coffin wore out the stone floor of Westminster Hall |url=https://news.sky.com/story/mourners-filing-past-the-queens-coffin-wore-out-the-stone-floor-of-westminster-hall-12757273 |work=Sky News |archive-date=1 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221201053748/https://news.sky.com/story/mourners-filing-past-the-queens-coffin-wore-out-the-stone-floor-of-westminster-hall-12757273 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The [[Parliamentary War Memorial]], or Recording Angel memorial, was designed by [[Bertram Mackennal|Sir Bertram Mckennal]] in 1921 and is located under the stained glass window in St Stephen's Porch at the south end of the hall. It displays on eight panels the names of the members of both Houses, parliamentary staff, and their sons who were killed while serving in the First World War. The window above, installed in 1952, commemorates the members of both Houses and parliamentary staff who died in the Second World War.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/cultural-collections/memorials/in-the-collection/world-war-i/wwi-angel-memorial/|title=Recording Angel memorial, Westminster Hall|access-date=17 October 2025|work=UK Parliament}}</ref> In 2012, a new stained glass window commemorating the [[Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II]] was installed opposite this window at the other end of the hall.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17442766|title=Queen tribute window unveiled in Parliament|date=20 March 2012|work=BBC}}</ref>

Extensive restoration of the wooden roof was carried out by [[Frank Baines|Sir Frank Baines]] after the discovery in 1913 of [[deathwatch beetle]] in the timbers.{{r|Gerhold|pp=77-79}}
On the night of 10 May 1941, at the height of [[the Blitz]], the Palace of Westminster was hit with incendiary bombs. Scottish politician [[Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)|Walter Elliot]] happened to be nearby and directed firefighters to prioritise saving the medieval hall rather than the chamber of the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]], the roof of which was also alight, and smashed through a door to the hall with an axe so hoses could be brought in.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/forgotten-scottish-hero-who-saved-westminster-hall-from-destruction-cbjjpchr6|title=Forgotten Scottish hero who saved Westminster Hall from destruction|date=2 March 2024|work=The Times|url-access=subscription}}</ref>{{r|Gerhold|pp=72}}

Women's suffrage has been celebrated in the hall with an exhibition in 1978 on the fiftieth anniversary [[Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928|Equal Franchise Act]],{{r|Gerhold|pp=81}} and the installation in 2016 of ''New Dawn'', a glass artwork by Mary Branson which is illuminated with light levels changing according to the tidal level of the [[River Thames]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Online Exhibition: New Dawn |url=https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/exhibits/new-dawn/|work=UK Parliament |access-date=17 October 2025}}</ref>

Following reforms in 1999, the House of Commons has used the Grand Committee Room off Westminster Hall as an additional debating chamber, where backbench [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Members of Parliament]] can raise matters of interest to them and receive a response from a government minister. Although the chamber is not part of the hall, these debates are usually spoken of as Westminster Hall debates.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ukparliament.shorthandstories.com/cet-westminster-hall-debates/index.html|title=Westminster Hall debates|access-date=17 October 2025|work=House of Commons}}</ref>

==Architecture==
[[File:Westminster Hall 02.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|One of the angel corbels which support the roof]]
The hall is notable for its [[hammerbeam roof]], which was commissioned by [[Richard II of England|Richard II]] in 1393. It was built by the royal carpenter, [[Hugh Herland]], and is considered "the greatest creation of medieval timber architecture" creating a single huge open space, with a dais at the end. Richard's master builder [[Henry Yevele]] retained the original dimensions, refacing the walls, with fifteen life-size statues of kings placed in niches.{{r|Gerhold|pp=17-19}} The rebuilding had been begun by King [[Henry III of England|Henry III]] in 1245, but by Richard's time had been dormant for over a century. Included in Richard's renovations are repetitions of his favourite heraldic badge – a [[White Hart]], chained, and in an attitude of rest – which is repeated eighty-three times without any being an exact copy of another.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bouell |first=Charles |title=The Handbook to English Heraldry |publisher=Reeves & Turner |year=1914 |editor-last=Fox Davies |editor-first=Arthur Charles |editor-link=Arthur Charles Fox-Davies |edition=11th |location=London |page=28 |authorlink=Charles Boutell}}</ref> Architectural historian [[John Harvey (architectural historian)|John Harvey]] has called the roof "the single greatest work of art of the whole of the European Middle Ages".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20170427-the-extraordinary-angel-roofs-of-england-|title=The medieval marvel few people know|date=3 May 2017|work=BBC}}</ref>

The floor area of the hall is about  1,547 sq m (1,850 sq yds) and the roof is one of the largest clearspan medieval roofs in Europe<ref name=G11/> The oak timbers for the roof came from royal woods in [[Hampshire]]; parks in [[Hertfordshire]]; from that of William Crozier of [[Stoke d'Abernon]], who supplied over 600 oaks from [[Surrey]]; and other sources. They were assembled near [[Farnham]], Surrey,{{convert|35|mi|km}} away, and brought to London by wagons and barges.{{r|Gerhold|pp=19-20}}
The design of the original roof is unknown. It is believed that, until the 13th or 14th century, carpenters were unable to create a roof significantly wider than the length of the timber available, yet no evidence of supporting columns has been found.<ref name=G11/>

==See also==
*[[St Mary Undercroft]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/westminsterhall/ Westminster Hall on the UK Parliament website]

{{Parliamentary Estate}}
{{London history}}
{{London landmarks}}
{{Royal palaces in the United Kingdom}}
{{World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom}}
{{Parliament Square}}

{{Coord|51.49986|-0.12537|region:GB_type:landmark|display=title}}

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