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Westminster Hall is a medieval great hall which is part of the Palace of Westminster in London, England. It was built in 1097 for William II (William Rufus), and at that time was the largest hall in England, and possibly in Europe. The hall is particularly notable for its hammerbeam roof, a form typical of English Gothic architecture which uses horizontal trusses to span large distances. The roof was commissioned for Richard II in 1393 and built by the royal carpenter, Hugh Herland. It is the largest clearspan medieval roof in England, measuring .Gerhold (1999), pp. 19–20. At the same time the rest of the hall was remodelled by the master mason Henry Yevele.Jonathan Alexander & Paul Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry, Art in Plantagenet England, 1200–1400, pp. 506–507, Royal Academy/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1987. Only six of the statues, rather damaged, remain, and the dias has been remodelled, but otherwise the hall remains largely as Richard and his master builder Henry Yevele left it. The renovations include eighty-three unique depictions of Richard's favourite heraldic badge, a resting chained white hart.
Westminster Hall has been used for various functions, including being used for judicial purposes from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. The hall is used for special addresses by Parliament to the monarch, and is on rare occasions the venue for joint addresses to the two chambers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was used to host coronation banquets until 1821, and since the twentieth century has been the usual venue for the lyings in state of state and ceremonial funerals.
In addition to regular courts, Westminster Hall has been the venue for important state trials, including impeachment trials and the trials of Charles I; William Wallace; Thomas More; John Fisher; Guy Fawkes; the Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford; the rebel Scottish lords of the 1715 and 1745 uprisings; and Warren Hastings.
Since the late 19th century, the hall has been used as a place for lying in state during State funeral and ceremonial funerals. Such an honour is usually reserved for the sovereign and for their consorts; the only non-royals to receive it in the twentieth century were Frederick Roberts, 1st earl Roberts (1914), the 48 victims of the crash of the airship R101 (1930) and Winston Churchill (1965). In 1910 the hall was used for the lying in state of Edward VII, followed by George V in 1936, George VI in 1952, Mary of Teck in 1953, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002, and Elizabeth II in 2022. On the last occasion approximately 250,000 mourners filed past the coffin, which resulted in the delamination of the Yorkstone floor.
The two Houses of Parliament have presented ceremonial addresses to the Crown in Westminster Hall on important public occasions. For example, addresses were presented at Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (1977), Golden Jubilee (2002) and Diamond Jubilee (2012); the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution (1988), the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War (1995), and the accession of Charles III (2022)
It is considered a rare privilege for a foreign leader to be invited to address both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. Since the Second World War, the only leaders to have done so have been French president Charles de Gaulle in 1960, South African president Nelson Mandela in 1996, Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, U.S. president Barack Obama in 2011, Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2012, and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023. President Obama was the first US president to be invited to use the hall for an address to Parliament and Aung San Suu Kyi was the first non-head of state to be given the accolade of addressing MPs and peers in Westminster Hall.
The Parliamentary War Memorial is located under the stained glass window at the St Stephen's Porch end of the hall. It displays on eight panels the names of the members of both Houses, parliamentary staff, and their sons who were killed while serving in the First World War. The window above, installed in 1952, commemorates the members of both Houses and parliamentary staff who died in the Second World War. In 2012, a new stained glass window commemorating the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II was installed opposite this window at the other end of the hall.
Following reforms in 1999, the House of Commons now uses the Grand Committee Room next to Westminster Hall as an additional debating chamber. (Although it is not part of the main hall, these are usually spoken of as Westminster Hall debates.) In contrast with the Commons chamber, in which the government and opposition benches directly face each other, the seating in the Grand Committee Room is laid out in a U-shape, a pattern meant to reflect the non-partisan nature of the debates there.
The largest clearspan medieval roof in England, the roof of Westminster Hall measures . The oak timbers for the roof came from royal woods in Hampshire; parks in Hertfordshire; from that of William Crozier of Stoke d'Abernon, who supplied over 600 oaks from Surrey; and other sources. They were assembled near Farnham, Surrey, away. Accounts record the large number of wagons and barges which delivered the Timber framing to Westminster for assembly.
The original design of the roof is unknown. It is believed that, until the 13th or 14th century, carpenters were unable to create a roof significantly wider than the length of the timber available, yet no evidence of supporting columns has been found.
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