The English Houses of Parliament

A lion reproduced in Clipsham limestone

After briefly exploring the village of Shireoaks in the last week of July 2020, I finally got to walk along the section of the Chesterfield Canal, from Shireoaks railway station to Kiveton Park railway station, on a hot summer's day.

 

The approach to Boundary Lock

For more than 20 years, since meeting the historian Christine Richardson at the time she was preparing Yorkshire stone for building the Houses of Parliament (1839–c.1852) with Graham Lott, I had been aware of the importance of the Chesterfield Canal in this story, yet I had never seen it.

 

A view of the Houses of Parliament from Lambeth Palace

It was well worth the long wait and the last remaining piece of my story of the English Houses of Parliament finally fell into place although, as I write, the heavy snow and rain and the increased usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic has made many of paths quite treacherous and visiting it at the moment is not recommended. 

 

Photos of ornamentation by Derek Engering

Very many years ago, in the days when my late father worked as a carpet fitter at the Houses of Parliament – and a single unarmed policeman guarded the entrance on the south side of the Victoria Tower – I was given an informal tour of its interior and later saw the condition of the Anston stone in the unrestored inner courtyards, although I was never allowed to take photographs.

 

Statuary on the Victoria Tower

Later in life as a building restoration contractor in London, I always wanted to undertake work on this magnificent building but an opportunity never arose; however, when undertaking geological surveys for the South Yorkshire RIGS Group in 1996 and during subsequent professional work, I got to know the Magnesian Limestone very well.

An old face of the Anston Quarry in a back garden

The history of the construction of the Houses of Parliament using dolomitic limestone from North Anston and its subsequent restoration therefore particularly interests me. When working on the new displays for the refurbished Clifton Park Museum, I used my contacts to obtain a salvaged moulded section for the new geology display.

 

Various displays at Clifton Park Museum

During recent changes at the museum that involved the inexplicable replacement of some of the geological displays with various stuffed birds, this piece of Anston stone was for some reason removed from the attractive glass cabinet. Despite expressing my concern at this, to the best of my knowledge it is still hidden away in a drawer, where the built in lighting never seems to work.

 

A finial at Anston Memorial Garden

Although being informally consulted by the Surveyor of the Palace of Westminster, about building stones that might be used for future phases of restoration of its exterior, for which others have presumably been well paid, I now reserve my own opinions on this subject for my journalistic work and the occasional walks and talks that I give for various local history and conservation groups.

 

A view of the Houses of Parliament from the London Eye