Portcullis House (PCH) is an office building in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

, London, United Kingdom, that was commissioned in 1992 and opened in 2001 to provide offices for 213 members of parliament and their staff. The public entrance is on the Embankment. Part of the

Parliamentary Estate The Parliamentary Estate is the land and buildings used by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The most notable part of the Parliamentary Estate is the Palace of Westminster, where the chambers of both houses of Parliament (the Commons and t ...

, the building augments limited space in the Palace of Westminster and surroundings.

History and use

The architects, Michael Hopkins and Partners, published their design in 1993 and the existing buildings on the site were demolished in 1994. At the same time, the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

was building the

Jubilee Line Extension The Jubilee Line Extension (JLE) is the extension of the London Underground Jubilee line from to through south and east London. An eastward extension of the line was first proposed in the 1970s. As part of the development of London Docklands, ...

, including a new interchange station at

Westminster tube station Westminster is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster. It is served by the Circle, District and Jubilee lines. On the Circle and District lines, the station is between St James's Park and Embankment, and on the Jubilee line i ...

which occupies the same area; the two were thus designed and built as a single unit. Construction began with works to the existing

District line The District line is a London Underground line running from in the east and Edgware Road in the west to in west London, where it splits into multiple branches. One branch runs to in south-west London and a short branch, with a limited serv ...

station at sub-basement level. The track had to be lowered slightly and underpinned to allow the extensive excavation to the

Jubilee line The Jubilee line is a London Underground line that runs between in east London and in the suburban north-west, via the Docklands, South Bank and West End. Opened in 1979, it is the newest line on the Underground network, although some secti ...

many feet below. The building above ground began to rise in 1998 and opened in 2001. It is located at the corner of Bridge Street (at the western end of

Westminster Bridge Westminster Bridge is a road-and-foot-traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, linking Westminster on the west side and Lambeth on the east side. The bridge is painted predominantly green, the same colour as the leather seats in the ...

) and

Victoria Embankment Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, and acts as a major thoroughfare ...

– overlooking the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

– and adjacent to the Norman Shaw South Building, which also overlooks the river. Westminster Bridge in 1928

The building is named after the chained portcullis used to symbolize the Houses of Parliament on letterheads and official documents. Portcullis House accommodates about one third of members of parliament; other Members and Parliamentary departments have offices in the two

Norman Shaw Buildings The Norman Shaw Buildings (formerly known as New Scotland Yard) are a pair of buildings in Westminster, London, overlooking the River Thames. The buildings were designed by the architects Richard Norman Shaw and John Dixon Butler, between 1887 a ...

(formerly known as Scotland Yard), in the buildings at 1 Parliament Street and at 7 Millbank, and in the Palace of Westminster itself. The first floor of Portcullis House is open to members of the public to allow attendance at Committee sessions. Throughout the rest of the building, as with the rest of the Parliamentary Estate, members of the public must remain with a passholder. The entrance is guarded by police, and all visitors must submit their bags and coats for X-raying, as well as passing through a

metal detector A metal detector is an instrument that detects the nearby presence of metal. Metal detectors are useful for finding metal objects on the surface, underground, and under water. The unit itself, consist of a control box, and an adjustable shaft, ...

and undergoing a body check. There is a Post Office branch within Portcullis House that is not open to the public.

Design

Portcullis House Interior Cafe 2015-09-19 (27694442083)

Portcullis House from the Houses of Parliament

The building was designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and incorporates Westminster tube station below it. A thick slab of concrete separates Portcullis House from the station, reportedly to defend against any underground bomb attacks. The load is borne by the walls, without interior posts. The corners of the building are hung from the roof using massive steel beams . The design life of 120 years meant that

aluminium bronze Aluminium bronze is a type of bronze in which aluminium is the main alloying metal added to copper, in contrast to standard bronze (copper and tin) or brass (copper and zinc). A variety of aluminium bronzes of differing compositions have found in ...

was chosen for exposed metal on the roof and walls. The structure also includes Devonian granite and was the last consignment to be excavated at Merrivale Quarry on Dartmoor. The columns between the windows are constructed of Birchover Gritstone. The building's curious profile, with its rows of tall chimneys, is intended to recall the

Victorian Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

design of the Palace of Westminster and to fit in with the chimneys of the Norman Shaw Building next door. Portcullis House's chimneys are not used to expel fumes but are part of an unpowered air conditioning system, which is designed to draw air through the building by exploiting natural

convection Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the conve ...

flows. It is based on the system used in 1996 in the

Eastgate Centre, Harare The Eastgate Centre is a shopping centre and office block in central Harare, Zimbabwe, designed by Mick Pearce. Designed to be ventilated and cooled by entirely natural means, it was probably the first building in the world to use natural cool ...

, Zimbabwe. The building itself was designed to look and feel like a ship inside. All the offices and passages are made up with bowed windows and light oak finishing. Each floor looks identical to the others except the ground floor which houses the main courtyard with ship-like metallic sails suspended overhead. The courtyard is decorated with trees and two shallow baths of water. The offices at Portcullis House are generally in sets of two sharing a common bay in the centre. Each floor is unofficially allocated to a different political party so that generally MPs with similar politics are kept together. The first floor houses a number of conference suites and committee rooms, which are named after famous politicians

Betty Boothroyd Betty Boothroyd, Baroness Boothroyd (born 8 October 1929) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for West Bromwich and West Bromwich West from 1973 to 2000. From 1992 to 2000, she served as Speaker of the House of ...

, Harold Macmillan,

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, and

Jo Grimond Joseph Grimond, Baron Grimond, (; 29 July 1913 – 24 October 1993), known as Jo Grimond, was a British politician, leader of the Liberal Party for eleven years from 1956 to 1967 and again briefly on an interim basis in 1976. Grimond was a lo ...

. These Committee rooms are accessible to the public and are fitted with television cameras and microphones, to broadcast the proceedings via

BBC Parliament BBC Parliament is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel from the BBC that broadcasts live and recorded coverage of the House of Commons, House of Lords and Select Committees of the British Parliament, the Scottish Parliamen ...

and via parliamentlive.tv. All rooms in the building are fitted with ''annunciators'' (monitors which announce in real-time the current business in the Chambers of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

, the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...

, or both). ''Division bells'' are also installed throughout the building, which alert MPs to the calling of a

division (vote) In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly, division of the house, or simply division is a method of taking a vote that physically counts members voting. Historically, and often still today, members are literally divided into physical ...

in the Chamber of the House of Commons. Along with this, visual aids (a flashing image of a bell) are displayed on television sets and computer desktops in MPs' offices when the Division bell sounds. On the ground floor are a range of services including a waiter-service restaurant ("The Adjournment"), informal cafeteria ("The Debate") and a coffee shop ("The Despatch Box"), available only to pass holders and their guests. There is also a post office and an ''e-library'', an enquiry point where Members and staff can use networked computers, run by the House of Commons Library. There is also an underground passage into the Palace of Westminster and a connection to the 1 Parliament Street building and to the

. For security reasons this is now the main route of access for Parliament.

Cost

When commissioned in 1992 the cost of Portcullis House was to be £165m. After building cost inflation and delays, the price increased to £235m. Costs included £150,000 for decorative fig trees, £2m for electric blinds and, for each MP, a reclining chair at £440. A parliamentary inquiry into the over-spend was carried by

Sir Thomas Legg Sir Thomas Stuart Legg (born 13 August 1935) is a British former senior civil servant, who was Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor's Department and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, United Kingdom (1989–98). Biography Born in London in ...

. Although completed in 2000, the report was never published. By April 2012 the fig trees, which were rented, had cost almost £400,000.

Footnotes

References

External links

Portcullis House on the UK Parliament website

galinsky
Inside Portcullis House
Ben Davies

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...