The Ghost of Westminster Hall

Delving into the supernatural legacy of the Palace of Westminster, Rich Bunn goes searching for poltergeists in the UK Houses of Parliament.

Transcript

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The Noses of St. Stephen In my second week at Parliament, I was called into a meeting that had already started. And when I tuned into the conversation, they seemed to be talking about noses. This is Unseen Parliament. Stories from inside the Palace of Westminster. I'm Rich Bunn. Parliament is a surreal place to work, partly because it's trying to be lots of things at once. It's a living museum, it's a tourist attraction, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's a palace, it's pretty much a small town, and of course it's also a large public sector organization and an entire government. And they're all layered on top of one another. I remember someone distinctly saying, Well, they're just too big. And this seemed like some pretty inappropriate commentary about personal characteristics. It was a good six minutes of bewilderment before I realized that they were talking about statues. The meeting was to address a problem that had cropped up during renovation of the ceiling of St. Stephen's Chapel, which was very much in need of restoration, and during that restoration work they had built protective barriers for the statues that lined the hall, except they'd built them ever so slightly too short, and some of them didn't quite meet the noses. Part of what makes Parliament such a surreal place to work is that the house service is still bound to some extent by an unspoken etiquette that often seems closer to an episode of Downton Abbey than real life. Part of that is conveyed in the dress of some of the people there, the doorkeepers weared frock coats with velvet collars, the sergeant at arms wear full dress uniforms and bicorn hats. The speaker wears a very elaborate robe. He also has a train bearer. Sometimes Parliament also has beef eaters, I know they come in once a year to search for gunpowder plots. And I hope I'm conveying the sense of how utterly otherworldly it can be to be there. You're already walking over the same flagstones that Edward the Confessor stepped over, or sitting in a chair that Churchill probably sat in, before a load of people turn up in Georgian court dress to move you on because you've been lingering around the basement for a little bit too long. Anyway, the meeting of the noses was a very fun one for me, and one of many strange, surreal meetings that I was called into during my time in the house service. But it's St. Stephen's Chapel that I want to talk about today because that's a marvellous part of Parliament. It's the previous medieval royal chapel of the Kings and Queens of England, a thousand years old, one of the oldest parts of Parliament. And the top level, which is the level that you see now if you come as a visitor, was for the exclusive use of the royal family, and the entrance that now leads to Central Lobby would have led to the royal apartments. If you were a king or queen and you happened to die whilst residing in Westminster Palace, that would be the chapel to which you were taken to lie in repose. St. Stephen's Chapel was also the first permanent home of the House of Commons, and you can see and underneath that is St. Mary's Undercroft, which very sadly is not open to visitors, but is an amazing sight with a vaulted stone roof, and this is what's wonderful about Parliament is that everything, everything you pass has some fascinating detail. There's a cupboard down there that you would walk straight past, but it's the broom cupboard where Emily Wilding Davison, the famous suffragette, hid on the night of the 1911 census, so that she could have her address recorded as the House of Commons on the census, arguing that if she was in the House of Commons like any man, she was entitled to the same political rights as them. And there's tiny little plaque on the on the door to show that. And even that has its own story, for it's rumoured that Tony Ben sought and received permission to have that plaque put up and got so bored of waiting for the House staff to get organized and do it that he went down there with a black and decker drill and put it up himself. So in fact, if you count them up, you've got all the politicians and all the visitors and all the kings and queens and all the statues, and that really is a lot of noses that have been in that chapel. Thanks so much for listening through to the end. I'm Rich Bunn, and if you've enjoyed this podcast, please think about subscribing or sharing with a friend. They're published every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye.