OLD WESTMINSTER RESTORED

Evening Star, Issue 18374, 7 September 1923, Page 10

OLD WESTMINSTER RESTORED

WHERE CROMWELL’S HEAD HUNG. W T hen the King reopened Westminster Hall, he was presented with a commemorative casket made from some of the ancient oak taken from tho roof. The casket contained a photographic record of the repairs, and some colored detail drawings. One interesting photograph showed workmen wearing gas-masks as a protection against tho poisonous fumes of the chemicals with which the timbers were sprayed in order to guard against any further depredations of the death-watch beetle. Members of Parliament and many other guests attended tho ceremony beneath the 500-year-old Sussex beams which presentday ingenuity has preserved for posterity, and some of the old oak. mere fragments i or “shells,” was on exhibition. I Westminster Hall is essentially a king's hall ; it was built by William 11. as a . place where he could feast his barons, | and was known for generations as ' “Rufus's Roaring Hall.” Richard If. raised the Norman walls and erected the glorious open hammerbeam roof, with its tracery and carved angels, as it may bo seen to-day Tho hall Is 240 ft long by 67ft wide, and, with tlie exception of the Hall of Justice, at Padua, is the largest building in the world the roof of which is unsupported by columns. There Richard feasted 10,000 persons daily during the Christmas of 1398, but the next year, in the hall he had made, he was forced to abdicate. The most poignant episode that ever took place in Westminster Hall was when Charles I. was condemned to death in 1649. Eight years later Cromwell was installed Lord Protector; the following year he was buried in Westminster Abbey, but in 1561 his body was dug up, and his head adorned the roof of West- I minster Hall for twenty years. 1 Westminster Hall has been flooded at I least twice by the Thames; during 1812 boats entered the building, the water be- | ing 3ffc deep. i In 1834 tho Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire, but engines were taken into the hall, and the country was spared a loss that neither art nor time could have replaced.