Welcome to our Houses of Parliament history section. You can skip to subsequent pages using the links below or simply continue reading to start at the beginning.
As early as the time of Canute the space between Westminster Abbey and the Thames was occupied by a Royal Palace, supposed to have been burnt about the end of the tenth century, and rebuilt by Edward the Confessor simultaneously with the abbey.
The second palace, of which nothing now remains but the crypt beneath St. Stephen's Chapel, all that survived until the present century having been burnt in 1834, was a fine Norman building of massive masonry encircled by cloisters, and covering the whole of what are now known as Old and New Palace Yards.