The Victoria Tower

The Clock Tower, often wrongly referred to as Big Ben, is one of the most well known towers in the world. At the other end of the Palace if Westminster is the Victoria Tower . It is 98m (323 ft) high - with a flagstaff adding a further 22m. It was not merely built to provide symmetry to the New Palace - but was custom designed to hold the parliamentary archives. [the rules for architects who had entered the competition to design a new palace to replace the one largely burned down in the disastrous fire of 16th October 1834 stated that the palace should include "fireproof repositories for books and documents"]. Today there are 5.5 miles of shelving - some in specially temperature and humidity controlled rooms - holding the archives which start in 1497. It is estimated that it is now 80% full!

Details of the holdings can be accessed here.
Click here for a history of the Parliamentary Archive

There is an online virtual tour of the tower accessible here. A souvenir booklet to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the completition of the tower will be produced towards the end of 2010.

A Journal kept for 500 years!

This month marks the anniversary of the House of Lords Journal. The very first entry is dated 21st January 1510. Until the end of March that first journal is on display in the Royal Gallery. My wife and I went to see it yesterday. This, and all subsequent journals are held by the Parliamentary Archives.

According to the Parliamentary website - "The Journal is the legal record of the proceedings of Parliament. Both the House of Lords and the House of Commons produce a Journal for each session. It is not a word for word record of everything spoken, but is a description of all the decisions taken. In the House of Commons, the Votes and Proceedings are consolidated into the Journals on a sessional basis and these form the authoritative record of the decisions of the House. In the House of Lords, the Journals are compiled from the Minutes of Proceedings by the Clerk of the Journals office ."

The Lords Journal for 2007-2008 can be read here.

The Parliamentary Archives

Every day Parliament produces a host of documents - Bills; Committee Reports; Hansard - and many others. It has been doing so for centuries. The collections in the Parliamentary Archives contain over three million records. Many of these documents have great historical significance.
Some of the cornerstones of the British constitution can be accessed here.

For scholars the records are important primary documents for their research. Once they were available to a priviliged few - but now increasing numbers of these records are available to many more people. Some have been digitised - To access these press here. The Archives at Westminster is usually open to the public all year round, Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 5.00pm (apart from public holidays).

As well as useful for researching Parliament; and British history (political and social), the records can be useful for investigating family trees. There is a guide for users.

To find out more about the Parliamentary Archives go to http://www.parliament.uk/publications/archives.cfm