A massive five-year endeavor to relocate four million historical papers from the Palace of Westminster to the National Archives in south-west London has finally concluded. This relocation brings together the legislative, executive, and judicial record collections, expanding the repository’s total holdings to 20m items, a third of which reside in a deep-level facility located in Cheshire. Explaining the necessity of the transition, chief executive Saul Nassé noted, “The archives of parliament lived at the Palace of Westminster very happily for very many decades. But that wonderful building, of course, has not been designed with modern preservation standards in mind.” He added that housing all branches together was “quite a significant thing, given the way our democracy operates,” noting that “you have the kind of three arms of the British state, all in one place”.
The mammoth transfer expanded Kew’s existing 174.5 linear kilometres of storage by an additional 16.5 linear kilometres. Every item has been systematically indexed and barcoded, allowing citizens to request and examine the artifacts free of charge inside a climate-controlled setting optimized for long-term conservation. Alongside standard documentation, archivists are managing unusual historic artifacts, including a piece of a gravestone, a uniform, a sword, and a suffragette banner smuggled into the House of Commons on 28 October 1908. During that protest, two women secured themselves to the Ladies’ Gallery ironwork while unfurling the fabric and crying, “We have been behind this insulting grille for too long.”
Among the newly integrated collection is the original vellum document that established annual Bonfire Night festivities across the United Kingdom. Following the thwarted attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up King James I, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, Parliament instituted the 1605 Thanksgiving Act to mandate 5 November church gatherings praising “miraculous and gracious deliverance” from “malignant and devilish papists” following the “Gunpowder Plot”. Early modern parliamentary expert Dr Graham Moore highlighted the elaborate wording typical of the era, explaining, “We often find that these acts have very flowery beginnings. The first section of the act lays out the reasons why the act is being instated. And then it goes into the actual legislation itself,” Pointing
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