The Houses Of Parliament And The Chesterfield Canal - Kiveton Park, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The Chesterfield Canal

The Houses Of Parliament
And The Chesterfield Canal

In October 1834 a tremendous fire destroyed the Old Houses of Parliament. With the confidence of the age it was decided that this was an opportunity to create a worthy home for the parliament of a globally powerful nation. The result was the famous building we know today - constructed with stone carried on the Chesterfield Canal.

This panel is located on the wharf where the stone for one of the world's most famous buildings was loaded onto horse-drawn narrow boats, each taking a load of 20 tons. In the 1840s the stone was taken thirty miles to West Stockwith, where the canal widens into a large basin, and a lock forms a link to the River trent. there the stone was trans shipped into Humber sloops; single-masted strongly-built wooden ships 65ft long, 16ft wide. Each carrying about 100 tons, the sloops sailed from Stockwith, down the Trent, out of the Humber estuary, through the North Sea, and up the Thames to Westminster - a voyage of 4-5 days depending on the direction of the wind.

The canal was used as the adjacent railway line had not yet been built, and in the 1840s the rail network was limited and of unproven reliability. The roads were inadequate, especially in winter. So the stone was carried by water, the method which had been used for many centuries before.

The stone was from a quarry in North Anston, only two miles from here. it had been chosen afte a nationwide survey. Each block of stone was carried from the quarry on a low wooden platform which has a number of small but strong wheels.

Each platform was slowly pulled by several horses. On arrival the blocks were shaped so stowage would be compact in the narrow boats and sloops which would take them to Westminster.

Problems soon arose. The first stone of the new Houses of Parliament was laid in April 1840 and most of the structure was completed by 1852, as hort timescale for such a complex building - and perhaps it was too short. Very soon there were signs of stone decay. Several parliamentary committees studied the causes but there is no clear reason for the problems. it is not known how much was replaced, but a substantial amount of stone carried from here remains in the Houses of Parliament.

The old buildings had developed in a piecemeal manner, and the new Parliamentary home on the same site would be very different. For over 500 years the roles of the Crown and Parliament had slowly diverged, but had still resulted in Parliament being housed in a Royal palace designed for residential use, hence the formal name still in use today - The Palace of Westminster.

Over the centuries there had been no plans for the building's development and it became usual for chambers to change their function, an example of which was the use of St. Stephen's Chapel as the home of the House of Commons. Members sat in the choir stalls, facing each other along the sides of the chamber - which is why the current House of Commons has the seating arranged in a similar manner.

When stone from the North Anston quarry was chosen the assessors had to bear in mind the stonemasons who would have to carve excessively elaborate designs (in an age before power tools), and its durability in London's already polluted air.