Ancient Secret Passage In The House of Commons.

Secret doorway rediscovered in the House of Commons

26 February 2020

A secret doorway, created for the procession to the Coronation banquet of Charles II, has been rediscovered in the House of Commons.

Historical doorway rediscovered

For centuries, the entrance would have been used by great political luminaries, such as the diarist Samuel Pepys, the first de facto Prime Minister of Great Britain – Robert Walpole – and arch-rivals Charles James Fox and William Pitt the younger. 

While a brass plate marks where the doorway had once been in Westminster Hall, historians believed it had been filled-in following reconstruction work after the palace was bombed during the Second World War.

However, following recent investigative work by Parliament’s Architecture and Heritage Team working on research for the Palace of Westminster’s Restor