In the dark hours after midnight, the quiet that envelops Westminster Hall is felt rather than heard. Like any great seat of power — for that is what the hall has always been, despite its cathedral-like stained windows and monumental stone walls — it is never really silent. Even in the smallest hours there are scurrying feet carrying messages, the tread of security patrols or the trudge of weary parliamentarians heading for the taxi queue. In such a vast space, such sounds become unfocussed, or muffled, like funeral bells in days of old.
Tonight, Westminster Hall is the scene of something unique and powerful in the British constitution: a stone cauldron where religion, politics, raw populism and that gunpowder-potent force, the public mood, all come together in a vigil for the longest-serving monarch this country has produced, whose crown gleams through the gloom where Philip Larkin might have reflected “in whose blent air all our compulsions meet, are recognised, and robed as destinies”. Already, the two-mile queues of mourners are evidence that an old magic has come alive again and something profound and significant is aflame in the heart of weary, cynical London.
Make no mistake; the lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Hall is no accident of time and space, nor the unthinking continuation of a royal tradition that is actually somewhat nouveau compared with the nine-century timespan of the Great Hall itself. Rather, it is a special meeting place of regal pomp, democratically-elected power and the great British public. When the Queen helped plan for her own funeral, each would have been in her mind. Westminster Hall was the original Grand Design, built to impress. While William the Conqueror founded the Tower of London in 1066 to terrify his newly-invaded populace, his son William Rufus commissioned the hall in 1097 to fill their hearts with awe.
It was immense, easily the largest hall the country — and probably the whole of Europe— had ever seen, some 240ft long and 67ft wide. The king himself wanted it even bigger, remarking it was a mere bedchamber compared with his intentions.
But the real architectural miracle was added another couple of hundred years or so later: a vast roof without pillars, something so advanced in engineering that for most people it could only be explained by divine grace. The 600-tonne joinery defied all known laws of construction, a feat achieved by an intricate balance of huge forces. To amazed courtiers and visitors, the entire roof seemed held aloft by the wings of the angels carved upon its gargantuan beams. The very same timber remains 600 years later.
After royalty fled the foul airs of Westminster, the hall was rented to the public and commerce. It was used as a market and meeting place. Even today, the walls are blackened in places from the smoke of flaming torches that lit celebrations.
But the Great Hall was also where King Charles I was tried and condemned to death. An arched side door near where the Queen lays leads to the old cloisters where the royal death warrant was signed. A staircase leads down to the gothic Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, where Oliver Cromwell stabled his horses to show contempt for royalty and where Margaret Thatcher’s body lay before her funeral.
With such extraordinarily rich history, the hall has been called the most revered building in London. Certainly when Nazi bombs set alight the roof during the Blitz, firemen were ordered to “save the Great Hall” with their hoses even as the Commons chamber blazed.
Its role for lyings-in-state began, starting with ex-premier Gladstone in 1898. Three other monarchs — Edward VII, George V and George VI — have lain in state. So did Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Sir Winston Churchill was also accorded the honour. Each was honoured by crowds of mourners and marked by brass plaques on the floor.
And this is where Queen Elizabeth II now lays, a hallowed space where all the great powers of the realm have collided, fought and come together over a 900-year history.
Symbolically, she has given her body over to the people she served, at the place where politicians now govern in the name of her son. Like the hall, the monarchy lives on. And the cries of “God Save the King” that rang out during yesterday’s procession suggest the old magic is working now as effectively as nine centuries ago.
