Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove | Hacker News Reader

Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

bbc.co.uk

291 pointsdavnicwil101 comments

When I was a young boy, I had fantasies of such secret doorways/passages/treasures being everywhere due to consumption of copious stories/comics involving such plots. When I did visit old ruins/temples etc, my searching eyes would be looking for that overlooked odd stone that was waiting for centuries just to be pushed so that it can reveal its ancient secrets.

Reading this discovery of the secret doorway sort of gave me a sense of vicarious validation.

Reading Don Rosa treasure hunts made me that way as well x)

Me and my friend once discovered one when we were kids.. Dunno what age we were, say 8.. We were exploring this abandoned country estate house that was near his house.. In a library there was one shelf that was still filled with books, turns they were fake books and the shelf was a door. It led to a stone staircase going down to a little underground chapel.. It was super creepy at the time.. Awesome experience tho. I still remember it obvs.

That house has since been done up and is a super posh hotel / golf course now. Now called 'Faithlegg house hotel'.

I wonder why anyone would take such pains to hide an innocent chapel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_church

Hidden chapels are fairly common in Europe during the Reformation when one could not be a practicing Catholic in a Protestant country and vice versa.

If it was in the UK, there was a period of time when the monarch was Catholic and burned Protestants at the stake and then the monarch changed and then the Catholics started getting burned. People of the "wrong" religion would have to practice in secret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole

And ironically, the people who would be the best off would be the atheists who were willing to pretend to go along with whatever was in control at the time.

If this was in England it may of been an extended priest hole to hide Catholic Priests after the reformation. If there was an entire chapel hidden away it may of been for said priest to conduct mass for the Catholic household in secret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole

In this case it's in Ireland, but since it was under English control at the time, it would likely be the same.

There was also a fashion for adding architectural follies, for example there's a tomb in Sir John Soane's home (complete with an egyptian sarcophagus, oddly in spite of its otherwise sort of Italian vibe)[1]

1: http://explore.soane.org/#/section/sepulchral

My mom was a big fan of mysteries, so when we renovated our house she had them put in a secret passage to her bedroom from the living room.

We've since sold the house, but the last time it was for sale I checked out the pictures and I can tell the passage is still there.

I assume you have read Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" -- if not, you should go get yourself a copy this very minute.

Recommendation seconded - for people with a fascination for secret doors!

There's a great (long) article on the building of the Palace of Westminster at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/01/a-tale-of-decay..., on how new infrastructure has just been added over time, never removing the old stuff because there's no time, and—with plans being lost—how this results in new shafts being found every now and then in the course of fixing leaks etc.

Good to see both software architects and architecture architects run into same issues with legacy stuff.

Blocking a hall is like commenting out code.

Ha, more like putting it in a block like `if (debug == True) ...`

Quite famously, software design patterns take inspiration from the field of Architecture [0]. The industry would do well to learn from them in how they deal with legacy systems, as well?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern#Histor...

By the time of the Truman presidency, apparently the White House was in such poor condition that the only way to save it was to entirely gut its interior and rebuild. It was gutted so thoroughly that they're driving heavy earth moving equipment around inside the building. There's a good photo at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House#Truman_reconstruct...

Looks like they kept the external walls and built a new steel frame inside.

There is also a pathway under the Ministry of Defense building to the preserved remains of Henry VIII's wine cellar. MoD is built on top of a section of the former Whitehall palace. It's a cool site to see that's closed off from the general public. I've been fortunate enough to visit, and it's perfectly preserved. One day when the MoD is done with that building, perhaps it will open to the public again. http://stuffaboutlondon.co.uk/london/henry-viiis-wine-cellar...

I wonder if the “graffiti artist” Tom Porter and the recorded stonemason Thomas Parker, are actually the same person. A cockney accent interacting with an RP ear would make Porter and Parker quite similar. Name misspellings of labourers were likely very common before mass-education was introduced in late XIX century.

>A cockney accent interacting with an RP ear would make Porter and Parker quite similar

Not really? The first vowel and third consonant are different in both dialects. (Note that while the 't' in Porter is subject to t-glottalization, the 'k' in Parker isn't.)

> The first vowel and third consonant are different in both dialects.

To my eye, each word has no more than two consonants in RP?

To your ear you mean? Yes, both dialects are non-rhotic. I mean the third orthographically.

No, I meant to my eye; I don't speak RP. But what training I have says to analyze e.g. "parker" as CVCV, p-ar-k-er.

I don't see more difficulty in saying "ar" is the first vowel in "parker" than in saying "th" is the second consonant in "wither"...

Orthographically speaking, 'p' is the first consonant, 'r' is the second consonant, and 'k' is the third consonant. Phonetically speaking, 'k' is the second consonant.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. I am curious, though, how you would personally describe orthographic consonant clusters such as "th" and "sh", and how, in your experience, other people usually refer to them.

In my experience, the unqualified terms “consonant” and “vowel” unambiguously refer to individual letters, and the terms “consonant sound” and “vowel sound” are used to refer to the noises produced when speaking. Thus, most people I know would refer to both “th” and “sh” as two consonants.

This is coming from a general US education with no focus on linguistics, and feels like the sort of thing that may have significant regional variances.

I'm sure that 1) modern inflections were exactly the same 170 years ago, and 2) builders of all ages are extremely precise and well-educated writers that would never mix up their letters.

I mean, even RP was barely formalized at that point...

RP was in the process of being formalized at that point. It was a BBC project (I exaggerate slightly)[1]. The Queen’s accent used to be distinctly non Received Pronunciation if you listen to early twentieth century recordings.

Stone Masons would almost universally have been literate because you need to engrave things. Half assed graffiti could be someone who was less a skilled tradesman than a member of the guild but guild members would have been expected to be able to read the Bible at least. Knowing how to spell your own name is not a big thing if you can read the KJV. And t->k is not a sound shift observed in historical language changes.

[1] RP probably received its greatest impetus, however, when it was selected in 1922 by the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English as a broadcasting standard – hence the origins of the term BBC English. The Committee believed Standard English, spoken with an RP accent, would be the most widely understood variety of English, both here in the UK and overseas. Members of the committee were also conscious that choosing a regional accent might run the risk of alienating some listeners.

https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/rece...

> RP was in the process of being formalized at that point. It was a BBC project

The first record of the term is from 1818 and the second decades later, according to wikipedia, hence why I said "barely formalized". A concept of upper-class English definitely existed, but it was certainly not as precise as what we now know as RP, nor did it match modern RP - it was just in the same ballpark, so to speak.

> Knowing how to spell your own name is not a big thing if you can read the KJV.

Most labourers today can read much more than the KJV (and probably in a one-off exam, I expect people were not re-tested every other week...) and still mispellings are routine.

There are also 15 years between inscription and official recording, and changing name in the UK has always been extremely easy, so there is also the chance that Tom Porter might have tweaked his name to sound different after 15 years around the upper classes.

Sure, I was just responding to the OP's claim that these two names would sound similar in "Cockney".

There would have been no t-glottalisation in the time period in question. More likely it would have been voiced, like in America or Australia. The idea they could have sounded the same is improbable.

Most remarkable: "The bulb that still worked after 70 years" - "A light switch - probably installed in the 1950s - illuminated a large Osram bulb marked 'HM Government Property'."

Yes there is a lightbulb conspiracy among producers that deliberately and jointly shortened the life span of their products in order to ramp up sales.

There's some truth to the fact that lightbulbs don't last as long as they used to; but there's a lot to unpick here.

First: This bulb was not turned on, and a light-bulb in storage does not degrade, there's no oxidisation happening inside the bulb itself.

Second: heavy filaments consume more power to emit light, and a heavy filament is the requirement to have a long-lived bulb

Third: Even with a heavy filament, bulbs will dim in their light output with years of use. The longest running light bulb in the world (101 powered on years if I'm not mistaken) is less bright than a candle, although originally it was about as bright as a 40w bulb.

More information on that bulb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

> and a light-bulb in storage does not degrade

Depends on the quality of the seal and how well it was evacuated. Older bulbs tend to be higher quality, thicker glass, much more material around the seal (the spot where the wires cross through from inside the bulb to outside).

Also I imagine these bulbs from the 50s were more expensive than today's bulbs, no?

For those downvoting me, here is the link to the trailer of the documentary of this 'planned obsolescence' conspiracy of the producers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KSC84K4rcY

Are you thinking of the Phoebus Cartel?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

I suppose it's accurate to call it a conspiracy since they literally conspired to divvy up markets and set predetermined bulb lifetimes.

Just an note, the article got the text wrong here.

The bulb actually reads: "Property of H.M. Government."

My honest first question when I read this is: Isn't knowing about every single passage and doorway absolutely critical to security in a facility where high risk persons work?

It seems absolutely crazy to me to think that, as a US comparison, they would let the President go anywhere that might have passages the Secret Service is unaware of.

> It seems absolutely crazy to me to think that, as a US comparison, they would let the President go anywhere that might have passages the Secret Service is unaware of.

Since the US President does occasionally visit the Palace of Westminster, we know the Secret Service demonstrably do allow him to go to such places.

This is a building where people are literally employed to walk the halls so that if there is a fire, it will be noticed in time to save the building.

This is also a building where Parliament can be shut down for a day because a pipe burst and flooded the chambers where they deliberate. (Happened about a year ago during Brexit deliberations.)

This is also a building where they know that they need to spend billions on renovations but can't.

On the flip side, this also has one of the most impressive remaining medieval roofs in existence. Contains the lobby that gave us the word "lobbying". And contains more history than any building that you can find in the USA.

If ever you go to London, get a tour of it. Seriously.

>This is also a building where they know that they need to spend billions on renovations but can't.

Second line of the article: "Historians working on the renovation of the House of Commons found the lost 360-year-old passageway, hidden in a secret chamber."

Planning permission has been filed for the first phase of works, not actually on the Palace of Westminster but on the other side of Portcullis House, to renovate those buildings so that everyone can move there for the years it will take to renovate.

Yes, work is being prepared. And yet, work was put off for decades and now work on the building is still going to be delayed for years.

Given that a comedian was able to bring a back of Swastika-themed golf balls within metres of Donald Trump (and threw some at him), despite the area being under lockdown for days, using (in total) about £300 spent on Hotel tickets and a jumper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3_F5_JPQA0), there's only so much they can do.

The doorway only leads to a small empty room. The actual passageway was blocked already in previous renovations, so there was no danger of anyone coming through it.

Sure, they know this now. But if they don’t even know what passages exist, how can they be sure one that leads outside doesn’t exist?

Even as an internal only room, could someone hide in there?

I wonder how much history would be lost to us if people didn't write stuff on walls. :D

I recall reading a hand-wringing article about a canyon with a lot of ancient Native American graffiti carved on the walls, and how it was in a state of crisis because modern American teenagers kept carving their own graffiti on the walls.

I don't really see how we can defend the idea that the ancient graffiti is historically valuable and it's a good thing it was left there, but the modern graffiti is a menace that needs to be stamped out.

I get the idea - the old stuff was impulsive nonsense too, of no more real value except as it illuminates how the human spirit never changes much.

But older-is-better/more important is a foundational principle of historical academics.

That's not really the idea - ancient graffiti is of vastly more value that the mere fact that someone wrote it. Ancient graffiti gives us insight into language and pronunciation (misspelling is very useful in reconstructing pronunciation), aspects of life considered taboo or otherwise unworthy of educated record (sex, usually), the lives of the comparatively poor and unimportant. It tells us about who was where, when, and doing what, in a way official records (if they exist) often don't.

Many of the things we've learned from graffiti can't be learned elsewhere. Things really would be lost to future historians if we managed to stamp out modern graffiti. Thankfully, we won't, so the question is moot.

You might as well ask why ancient cesspools are historically valuable and best left alone for archaeologists to work on, while we still clean garbage off the streets.

It's because they're old and rare. A pile of modern garbage? Not interesting. A pile of Roman garbage? That's an archaeological site.

Obviously these conversations are from the perspective of future archaeologists

If we didn't clean up the garbage and prevent the graffiti, the ancient historical garbage and graffiti wouldn't be rare, so it would be much more boring to future archæologists!

Sounds a bit like El Morro National Monument. https://www.nps.gov/elmo/index.htm

I rather wonder how the historian will make something of the many billions of selfies, mindless tweets and click bait articles that our civilisation produces and that will likely be stored forever!

I doubt they will be stored forever. They will be lucky to make it through a great recession. A forgotten scratch in a forgotten passage can last as long as the building. But digital media requires someone to constantly maintain it. If we all move from Instagram and Facebook goes broke, you can bet those selfies will go the same way as geocities.

Except that the cost of storing this data is constantly going down. I wouldn't be surprised if you could store all of the internet as of 2000 in a handful of modern 16TB drives.

I wonder if the file format they use to store the digitised plans will still be readable 300 years from now.

Architectural plans in vector format are quite small in file size. I imagine it will be more of a ship of theseus type situation, where the files reside on one big NAS/SAN type system (which of course has backups) and are migrated while online to new bigger storage systems over time, repeat several many dozen times.

The UK does have some experience with that gang aft agley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

Can someone please mark that hidden passageway on this plan?

http://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5763/6e3a/e58e/ce0d/87...

It's not every day that you see a news article reference dendrochronology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology

I guess these things get lost overtime if there is no system of documenting what happened and is happening with any building over a long period of time?

A nice startup idea would be to create a system/website/app that documents what happens to any building over time including all maintenance and future plans!

City councils have something like this but I imagine it is pretty simple and does not capture a lot.

I think that's what BIM systems are for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling

A startup that simplifies the process/visualisation and makes it accessible to whoever is going to use it will always win!

> For some reason I feel like anything IBM does is overly complicated and over the top!

I think you've misread 'BIM' as 'IBM'. Building Information Modelling is a specific task for software, as the linked wiki page describes.

Yes I did! Sorry, edited the comment! Thanks

In some ways the app is easy. Capturing what happens is not, especially if there's no immediate incentive to do so. And writing an app in 2020 doesn't tell you want happened in 1660. Then you have to cope with app longevity; most apps deployed in 2020 will be dead by 2030 while the Houses of Parliament will still be there (unless they burn down due to ongoing fire code issues)

Hence having "system/website/app". The system is there to conserve everything and hopefully it will transcend technologies and be easy to migrate the data to whatever comes next.

We have legislation on vellum going back centuries; it's transcended technology and successfully been copied (I wouldn't say actually 'migrated') to other papers and the gov.uk website.

Which is why GP talks about incentive. What technology is your "system/website/app" going to use? Who's incentivised to update it? Who migrates to something else when you abandon it? How much does all this cost compared to non-digital records, which have almost certainly been kept, but some lost due to a lack of incentive to keep them up to date and safe?

Since 2016, UK laws have not been recorded on vellum anymore [0]

[0]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/12149181/Thousand-year...

From the government that destroyed all Windrush records, comes another shocking tale of incompetence with malicious undertones.

Laws are written down to make them as permanently-accessible as possible, which acts as defense against capricious rulers. Anything that makes them less permanent is a small blow to the rights of everyday people.

Clearly we should start casting the laws into stainless steel plates.

That would be pretty cool... except it would require non-renewable sources and likely be more CO2-intensive and energy-intensive, so the window of opportunity for that switch has probably come and gone.

I would argue that a law that is so seldemly referenced that all copies are lost ceased to be valid.

But I understand that the British system isn't built that way and instead of creating a consolidated "constitution" rather enjoy the fun of a Speaker citing some old precedent, which nobody can know about. True excitement.

To which precedent to you refer? Most are catalogued in Erskine May.

It seems many people were quite surprised about Bercow taking precedent from 1604, which seems to be from Erksine May.

This precedent certainly doesn't come from vellum, which GP misses.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-46810616

You seem to have confused a couple of things - or else posted the wrong link.

The 'precedent from 1604' was that parliament couldn't be asked to vote twice on the same matter in the same sitting; but that isn't archaic and disused, it's common practice and Bercow (and other members) quoted numerous occasions on which speakers had disallowed votes on its basis.

Your link is about Bercows 'unprecedented ruling' giving MPs more control over the business of the HoC, as opposed to the Government.

I thought that was rejected, and it was voted against (non-binding motion) though it seems they 'backed down' (2017), and now they are recorded on archival paper, and covered in vellum:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/21/anger-mps-bow-pe...

So, ok, thanks - I take back the 'not actually migrated' part, but I still think it serves as an example of not-technology lasting successfully for a very long time, and the replacement is... a different paper technology!

I suggest stone slabs or clay tablets instead of digital technology.

They found the plans for this in their archive. It had just been forgotten about. People are always finding forgotten treasures in the back rooms of archives, because they're full of ancient stuff and actually getting the right pair of eyeballs to recognize the importance of old stuff is really hard.

Digitizing everything helps, but the enemy is still volume, time, and money, and digitizing costs even more money.

Buildings can stand for centuries or even a millennia whereas a webpage half-life is 2 years...

This is an entire commercial space with existing players and complex regulation in business activities. These products already exist be it bim software like revit from Autodesk or gis from Esri like their permit license land software

Dont assume because you aren't familiar with the space that nobody is there and that you can convince anyone to buy your system over something supported by standard setters like Autodesk and Esri.

This is not an easy not to crack and a lot of people have tried already.

British are known for building many escape routes e.g. The road in 1942 as an evacuation route in preparation for a possible Japanese invasion of South India. With a maximum elevation of 2,480 meters (8,140 ft) just south of Vandaravu Peak, it was among the highest roads in India, south of the Himalayas, prior to its closure in 1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodaikanal%E2%80%93Munnar_Road

The American version might be the long-hidden Senate Bathtubs: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/senate-bathtubs

The tunnel had electric lights? So.. lost in the sense that within the last seventy years somebody forgot, not lost for 170 years.

Reminds me of the castle in Gormenghast

There’s the plot for National Treasure 3 and 4z

So the treasure is a light bulb? Pretty boring.

Any hoard of gold and jewels would have been pilfered by the politicians years ago.

Orrrrrrrrrder! (While I go "inspect" the jewels.)

(Too bad, no more Bercow in the HoC; he'll have to say it in lecture halls from now on. :')

Three things intrigue me about this:

1) why did they release this today? They've had time to clean it (that door is spotless on the inside), and to wire in electrics [or they were there and this is a fraud] -- so why today, what's happening that they're keeping out of the news ... (it happens, witness Boris's "bus collection" story).

2) who in this day and age installs brass light switches, where did they even buy that switch this week (presumably this week, or how long have they been sitting on it)?

3) does Parliament really need it's own locksmith, or do they mean they booked their regular locksmith to come?

Anyway, nice little puff piece.

How did they just so happen to have the key to a hidden door that hadn't been opened in 68 years that they didn't even know existed?

They didn't have the key.

The team turned to Parliament's locksmith for help and, with some difficulty, he was able to open the wood panel door, to reveal a tiny, stone-floored chamber, with a bricked-up doorway on the far wall.

Looks like the locksmith picked it maybe?

The locksmith got the door open. It doesn't say he had the key.

Nope, but the video doesn't mention how they acquired the key either, they just demonstrate how it opens. I'll be honest and say that I didn't read very far into the article either and just skimmed it while listening to the video.

They didn’t, they made a new key. An old lock for a service door is likely to be trivial to crack these days.

Edit: from the Guardian: “Liz Hallam Smith, the team’s historical consultant from the University of York, said: “[...] Once a key was made for it, the panelling opened up like a door into this secret entrance.”

I can almost imagine Boris Johnson pushing everybody aside whilst approaching the tiny door and screaming: "Let me through,let me through! The gold is all mine,the gold is all mine!" Obviously all this happening while Patel smirking in the shadows knowing too well that the gold was stolen by Cameron ages ago.

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