The building is Grade I listed with the
entry at the English
Heritage website telling us:
"Law Courts. 1866 competition,won by
G E Street finally in 1868, work only begun, to modified design,in 1874 when
Philip Webb was Street's chief assistant and completed 1882 under final
supervision of Street's son A E Street and Arthur Blomfield. Portland stone for
principal Strand and west elevations, red brick back with lavish stone
dressings, banding and chequerwork to east and north elevations, slate roofs.
Serious, consistent and "rational" application of C13 English Gothic style,
fulfilling a highly demanding brief for a monumental programme and developing a
varied, but carefully balanced, composition to be seen in perspective with
highly inventive detailing, despite the vast scale and a certain lack of
coherence in consequence. Mainly 3 storeys. Controlled asymmetry with 6-bay east
wing terminating just before end in lofty clock tower and a 15-bay,virtually
symmetrical composition about the major axis of the main entrance and Salle des
Pas Perdus of the Great Hall. The hall gable end and great window are set back
behind portal archway recessed in turn between polygonal towers with slated
spires. Double or triplet-shafted windows in link-ranges and in gabled bays with
tourelles-bartizans. Triple arched gateway into east court acts as link to east
wing. The Great. Hall gable contains a rose and is flanked by corner turrets
with lucarne and gallet stone spires. The Great Hall ridge is crowned by a
fllche. The east and north brick and stone elevations have more of the lively
inventiveness and love of pattern of Street's earlier, smaller scale works. The
lofty brick and stone north east tower was built while Philip Webb was Street's
principal assistant. The major internal feature is the vast Salle des Pas
Perdus, rib-vaulted and shafted with blind arcading, with rich stiff leaf
carving to doorways and diapering; lancets or grouped lancets with geometrical
tracery; spiral staircases lead off with courtrooms ranged on either side and to
the north. Fine quality of execution throughout despite the size of the
building. In the Hall a very dignified seated statue commemorating Street, by H
H Armstead, was set up in 1886."
The Student
Chambers website gives an insight into what happens
here:
"What you won’t see in the Royal
Courts of Justice is a criminal trial. Those take place down the road at the Old
Bailey. You will see criminals, but they will be already convicted, because this
is where they come to challenge their original sentence. On our visit we walked
past a court where Olusola Akinrele, a man convicted of killing his seven-week
old baby, was appealing.
Juries are also largely absent from
the RCJ: they only sit on cases of libel and slander. It is judges alone who
determine the outcome of all other disputes that are heard here. The libel cases
attract massive attention, of course: the same week we were there, Peter Andre
and Katie Price were due to slug it out on a suit he’d brought against her for
libel. We’re guessing they must have subsequently settled the
matter.
So, the first thing we learned from
our guide Brian is that it is civil justice that is dispensed at the RCJ. It is
home to the High Court of England and Wales, which consists of three
divisions:
The Chancery Division: Business,
trade and industry disputes, (intellectual property, professional negligence,
tax matters, etc) and personal disputes (trusts, wills, probate etc) fall under
the remit of the Chancery division. A central principle is the concept of
equity.
For example, the Spice Girls showed
up here in a contract dispute. Sporty, Scary, Baby, Posh and Ginger had agreed a
sponsorship deal with Italian scooter manufacturer Aprilia, who weren’t best
pleased when Geri Halliwell then quit, leaving a marketing campaign that
featured a fab five, not a fab four. Aprilia won damages when the judges ruled
that the group was guilty of misrepresentation because they knew Geri was about
to leave.
The largest growing sector in the
Chancery division at the moment is insolvency – an extra 20,000 personal
insolvencies and an extra 60,000 company insolvencies came the way of this
division last year.
The Queen’s Bench Division: Handles
large commercial disputes (anything worth over £100,000 automatically comes
here); shipping, building and IT matters; claims involving personal injury;
medical negligence; and civil wrongs (eg libel and slander). For example, the
parents of Madeline McCann turned up here to sue newspapers that had made
unfounded allegations against them.
The Family Division: Divorce,
annulments, care of children, domestic violence, etc. Think Heather
Mills-McCartney, a famously thrown jug of water and, well… you get the
picture.
One of the most striking things we
saw was a massive marquee that had been erected in the main courtyard (next to
the parked prison vans). This would hold the members of the press and other
interested parties for the 7/7 inquest that started later the same week in Court
73. That courtroom also hosted the Hutton Inquiry and the inquest into the
deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed.
One of the most unusual things we
heard is that every week, staff set up badminton nets in the main lobby and
enjoy a few games. At other times the venue is used for big
parties.
Who sits where in a
courtroom?:
Centre stage and up front: a judge (or three for
appeals)
In front of the judge: a court
clerk, who draws up orders and fixes other things for the judge; a stenographer;
and an usher who is responsible for keeping the court tidy and people in order.
Also passes paperwork up to the judge and swears in witnesses using the correct
oath and Holy book. Apparently many European countries have already moved to a
single non-religious oath.
To the side: a press
seat.
The very front row facing the judge
and court officials: litigants in person
Second row: QCs At this point there
is a wooden gate at the side of the rows called The Bar (from whence we get the
expression ‘called to the Bar’).
Third row: junior
barristers
Remaining rows: anyone else who
chooses to attend, be they solicitors or members of the public. Up above and to
the rear is a public gallery, rarely used, although we hear that when the
Ghurkhas’ case was being heard it was packed. It was the same when the video
evidence was being shown in the Max Mosley libel trial.
And where else might you find
yourself as a trainee or litigation solicitor? Quite possibly, The Bear Garden.
This location struck fear into the heart of our editor when she was a brand new
trainee, dispatched to the RCJ to obtain an (uncontested) order during her first
week on the job. There are no bears, of course, and it’s not a garden, so why
did it earn the strange name? The Bear Garden is the area adjacent to the rooms
of the Masters of the High Court. Lawyers often gather here to consider or
discuss last-minute issues prior to appointments. In days gone by papers were
lowered down to the lawyers in baskets from a gallery above. One day Queen
Victoria visited the court and hearing the noisy hubbub in this area she
remarked that it sounded like a garden full of bears.
History of the RCJ:
Until the
late 19th century, a number of separate courts existed all around London. The
Chancery Court, featured in Dickens’Bleak House, was one of these. The site upon
which the RCJ now stands was in those days a slum – around 450 houses occupied
by more than 4,000 people. When it was decided that London’s courts should be
brought under one roof, the land was bought from Middlesex County Council for
£1.4m – that’s about £55m in today’s money – and the people were cleared
out.
A leading architect of the day,
George Edmund Street, won the competition to design the new building, and
construction began in 1873. It took more than eight years to complete, due in
part to a stonemasons strike. Masons were shipped over from the continent to
keep work going, and housed within the building to protect them from the wrath
of their striking English counterparts. Supplies came in through a secret
underground tunnel.
The finished building contained 35
million Portland stone bricks, more than 3.5 miles of corridor and over 1,000
clocks (many of these have to be wound by hand; a man dubbed The Dawn Winder by
Radio 4 comes in a couple of mornings every week to do this). Street died a year
before the RCJ was completed, but his son took over and was present at the
opening ceremony, where Queen Victoria expressed the hope that “the uniting
together in one place of the various branches of Judicature in this Supreme
Court will conduce to the more efficient and speedy administration of justice to
my subjects.”"