Gunpowder, Fires and a Rebuild

A Palace was originally built on the site as early as the eleventh century, and for the first few centuries it served mainly as a royal residence. It became the home of the UK Parliament in 1512 when King Henry VIII moved to Whitehall.
One of the most well known historic events in its early history was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when a gentleman named Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament in order to kill King James I so that his daughter could take the throne and marry a Catholic, reversing a number of anti-Catholic laws that had been made during the fifteenth century. The attempt was not successful and Fawkes’ lantern can be viewed in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum to this day.
In 1834, a large fire caused by stoves burning the Exchequer’s ‘tally sticks’ (ancient devices used to document numbers) destroyed most of the original palace, which had been built from wooden timber. Architect Charles Barry designed the replacement palace, and thirty years later construction was complete, resulting in the gothic-style building which we see today. Two iconic towers sit either side of the building; the Victoria tower and the Elizabeth tower. The Elizabeth tower is the most famous of the two, with its giant clock-face and great bell (otherwise known as Big Ben).