Suffrage and Smoke: The UK Parliamentary Archives’ Challenges in Caring for Collections Housed in the Palace of Westminster

ABSTRACT

The activities of the UK Parliamentary Archives bridge the space between built heritage and in situ collection management. They are housed in the Palace of Westminster, London, designed and built after the fire of 1834. Whilst primarily looking at the work of conservators, archivists and curators related to two specific projects, we acknowledge and describe our collaborations and compromises in a building that is a high-profile and high-risk workplace, a ceremonial location, and an archive and museum in all but designation. The first project is a temporary Voice and Vote exhibition built in the summer of 2018 within the UNESCO-designated Westminster Hall. The exhibition necessitated additional build requirements and tailored emergency planning. The second project is the legislatively-mandated building upgrades to the Parliamentary Archives’ storage space in Victoria Tower. Together, these projects demonstrate collaborative working between several Parliamentary heritage teams, service teams such as Strategic Estates, Fire Services and external contractors. These two projects in the context of a heritage site illustrate the challenges of caring for collections which are housed in historic buildings, the impact of building environment on its associated collections, and the challenges of maintaining archives and their storage spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Archive storage
• collection care
• emergency planning
• grab sheet
• collections in situ
• induction
• Palace of Westminster
• temporary exhibition

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues including: Lara Artemis, Caroline Babington, Adrian Brown, Thomas Bower, Simon Gough, Charlotte Grimsdell, Jennifer Lynch, David Prior, Elizabeth Ralph, Emma Traherne, Mary-Jane Tsang, and Melanie Unwin.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Restoration and Renewal website https://restorationandrenewal.parliament.uk/?page_id=147.