Archival and archaeological evidence for the creation of the door passage

When rediscovered in 2018, the door passage was at first assumed to date from the first part of the seventeenth century.Footnote ⁸ However, the assignment through dendro-isotope dating of a felling date of Spring 1659 for the timbers of the ceiling joists prompted a major re-assessment.Footnote ⁹ It was noted that up to 1660 the doorway would have had no obvious purpose since the route from Westminster Hall to the House of Commons and the southern end of the palace was via a medieval doorway nearby. As depicted in a drawing of 1559,Footnote ¹⁰ this was in the south wall of Westminster Hall, close to the south-east corner.Footnote ¹¹ It was known to have been blocked off in 1660–1 when the dais at the south end of Westminster Hall was remodelled and extended for Charles ii’s coronation: part of major works in the hall that included repaving the floor.Footnote ¹² A new access route to the Commons was therefore needed, and the dimensions of the doorway created for that purpose, as stated in the accounts, matched with those of the door passage.

The new entrance was formed by cutting a tunnel through the east wall of Westminster Hall (fig 5a), a process described in the accounts as ‘beating down’. The key entries in the accounts are:

Fig 5.

Development of the opening, showing state in 1661 (a), 1846 (b), 1851 (c), 2021 (d). Drawing: John Crook.

The accounts thus show that an aperture 8ft thick, 11ft wide and 14ft high (2.43 × 3.35 × 4.26m) was made through Westminster Hall’s wall and that its walls were lined with brickwork one and a half bricks thick (about 380mm (15ins)). Because of the fourteenth-century extra skin, the east wall of the hall thickens northwards, but on the centreline measures 2.55m (8ft 5ins). Excluding the brick lining, the opening as broken through would have been about 3.48m (11ft 5ins) in width at the widest, east end. The height from the stone-flagged floor to the ceiling now averages 3.5m (11ft 6ins): it is likely that a taller opening of 4.27m (14ft) high was initially created but subsequently lowered. That would account for the fill visible above the joists, which includes post-medieval brick. The ceiling slopes upwards by around 40mm from east to west.

Exterior of the doorway in Westminster Hall

The only known contemporary illustration of the doorway’s exterior is in Brittannia [sic] Illustrata of 1727 (fig 6), where it is described as the entrance to the House of Commons.Footnote ¹⁷ Although this part of the engraving lacks detail, the location and shape of the doorway conform with the archaeological evidence outlined below.

Fig 6.

Left: the only identified contemporary image of the doorway, seen at the south end of Westminster Hall, as shown in the rectified detail (right). The central doorway at the south end of Westminster Hall, between the two law courts, is also shown. Image: reproduced from Brittannia Illustrata (BL, RB.23.c.669, 1727, pl 26).

The doorway was blocked off on this side in 1807. That section of Westminster Hall’s east wall was later refaced by Sydney Smirke, probably in 1837, using Huddleston stone from Yorkshire,Footnote ¹⁸ and further repairs have taken place subsequently. In the 1850s Charles Barry constructed across the lower part of the doorway a raised platform area leading to the entrance to the chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Although by that time inaccessible, the existence and location of the hidden doorway were still known, and from 1895 it was marked by the brass plaque in Westminster Hall along with bronze studs in the wall, 2.67m apart, to indicate its position (fig 4). In 2014, repairs to the facing of this section of wall revealed part of the doorway’s southern stone jamb along with nineteenth-century brickwork (fig 7).Footnote ¹⁹ At that time, however, it was not realised that a void lay behind it.

Fig 7.

Left: location of the plaque and the studs; the two pale blocks of Huddleston stone are those that were replaced in 2014. Photograph: John Crook. Right: remains of the right-hand (south) jamb of the stone entrance arch to the passageway as recorded in September 2014 during repairs to the walls. Photograph: © Mark Collins, reproduced with kind permission.

Interior: ceiling

The ceiling of the door passage (fig 8) is formed of oak joists laid flat, running north to south. These are supported on the brick side walls. However, in order to support the medieval walls when the cavity was broken through, the wall must have been needled, and the needle beams would have run east to west. Some larger timbers appear to be visible through gaps in the joists.

Fig 8.

The ceiling of the door passage (west at top). Photograph: John Crook.

Interior: the west wall

When constructed in 1660–1 the west side of the door passage encompassed the great doorway leading into and out of Westminster Hall. Four iron pintles – the ‘iron hookes’ in the accountsFootnote ²⁰ – that originally supported the two doors are to be seen on the two sides. The doors closed flush against the face of the square opening, without any rebate. The pintles are set in the stone blocks of the internal corners of the passage. The stone appears to be Kentish Rag, visible where the render has fallen away from the lower block. Removal of small areas of nineteenth-century plaster on this wall revealed the outline of the inner (east) face of the 1661 doorway (fig 9). The door head is flat and is formed of twelve Kentish Rag tapered voussoirs, which continued well above ceiling level.

Fig 9.

Elevation of rear wall of passageway. Drawing: John Crook.

This side of the passage was first blocked up in 1807, but a smaller opening with a timber doorcase was inserted in the brickwork in 1846 (figs 5b and 10). That aperture was in turn blocked in 1851 with bricks varying in colour from yellow to salmon pink. Remains of the cut-back red brickwork of 1807 are visible around the edge of the unplastered area. The glass panel on the left covers a pencil graffito of 1851, and there is another dated 1950 to the right.

Fig 10.

Rear (west) wall showing the short-lived opening of 1846. It was blocked in 1851, as recorded by a graffito behind the glass panel to its left. Photograph: John Crook.

Interior: the east wall

Any evidence for the original treatment of the opening on the cloister side appears to have been concealed by mid-twentieth-century panelling and the new plaster above it. The cloister pilaster buttresses flanking the opening would originally have acted as jambs, but a lintel must have been set above the opening. From here, the route to the House of Commons continued via the former two-bay porch at the south-west corner of the cloister, from whose first bay a flight of stairs within the thickness of the east wall of Westminster Hall led up to the lobby of St Stephen’s Chapel.Footnote ²¹ This access arrangement had been formed when the cloister was first built in the late fourteenth century, and was retained when the chapel became the Commons chamber.

The former east end of the door passage is blocked by brickwork of 1851, visible from within the chamber thus formed, including a central pilaster buttress. To the south of that, a patch of yellow brickwork is evidence for the rediscovery of the passageway on 21 June 1949 (fig 11, right). Subsequently a small rectangular opening was formed to the north of the pilaster, to maintain access (fig 17).

Fig 11.

Left: north wall. Brickwork of 1660–1 is apparent behind the thin plaster render. Right: south wall. In the adjacent east wall is yellow brick infill of the opening made on 21 June 1949. Photographs: John Crook.

Current state: the north and south walls

The north and south side walls are finished in limewashed hair plaster, 4–6mm thick. On the north side the shadow of the brickwork is discernible behind the render (fig 11, left) and where the plaster has fallen away red bricks are visible set in a very white, soft lime mortar.Footnote ²² On the south wall of the door passage (fig 11, right), the thin plaster render also appears to be primary.

Both walls show evidence of small cavities, later infilled. The one on the north wallFootnote ²³ coincides with the end of the door swings when opened and may relate to the ‘greate staye’ of the 1661 accounts, weighing 11lb and evidently of iron, holding back the door.Footnote ²⁴ Its infill of red bricks and hair plaster are, however, earlier than any of the subsequent phases. The position and dimensions of a rectangular patch on the south wallFootnote ²⁵ do not match it and the render appears to be modern cement. Its east edge seems to correspond with the door swing of the south door leaf, so it may be a primary feature related to the actual door. Its depth is not known. Several layers of limewash are discernible on the south wall face; and there are also some scrawled calculations on the latest limewash, and spurious graffiti.Footnote ²⁶

Interior: the floor and sills

The floor of the door passage appears to be of the primary phase of 1661: the plaster render on either side seals the floor slabs, which probably abut the face of the brick skin to north and south. The slabs are of a white limestone, seemingly Purbeck stone from the Portland Formation brought from the Dorset coast,Footnote ²⁷ consistent with the 1660–1 accounts.Footnote ²⁸ The stone for the sills at either end of the new entrance was specified as Kentish Rag (called ‘Kentish Step’ in the accounts).Footnote ²⁹

Analysis of the floor slabs is hindered by spreads of modern mortar, but towards the west end of the door passage the pavers in the centre are worn. Those at the sides, where people would not normally have trodden, retain their tooling, done with a comb chisel and evidently finished in situ.Footnote ³⁰ A part of the pavement appears to have been replaced when the passageway was reopened in 1846, as an area lacking paving stones corresponds in width to that opening.

The floor level inside the chamber is 3.23m aOD. This is consistent to within 30mm with the level of the Purbeck marble paving of 1660–1 in Westminster Hall, as rediscovered by Sydney Smirke in 1835 and at that time thought to be medieval.Footnote ³¹ The present cloister floor is at 3.40m aOD. Given the insertion of service passages beneath the cloister floors in the nineteenth century, modernised in the twentieth, this is likely to be higher than the original level.

The doorway and coronations, 1661–89

Created in 1661–2 as part of the works for the coronation of Charles ii, the doorway served as the main route from Westminster Hall to the House of Commons and also to the south end of the palace. Its use as an access way for coronations is likely to have been short-lived, but its iconographic significance continued for far longer, for the accounts show that a sculpted head of Charles i carved by a William Beard (otherwise unknown) was set above the doorway and secured with an iron cramp.Footnote ³² It was set in a cartouche of Beer stone.Footnote ³³

During Charles i’s reign (1625–49), busts of the king had often been placed in prominent places to make a political point, and the Interregnum régime had ordered many of these to be decapitated. The symbolism of the placing of the late king’s head so close to the very spot in Westminster Hall where he had stood trial would therefore not have been lost on contemporaries.Footnote ³⁴ In his History of the Coronation of James II, Lancaster Herald Francis Sandford marks it on a plan as ‘the dore through which the proceeding first entered Westminster Hall’ in 1685. It was thus the way that the king first appeared in splendour in Westminster Hall on the morning of the coronation and walked up to the high table to preside over the coronation breakfast, to the acclamation of the peers.Footnote ³⁵

This use of the doorway for the first ceremonial arrival of the monarch may not have survived for long, given Queen Anne’s infirmities and later remodellings of the southern end of the hall. Nevertheless, the head would still have been highly visible during both the coronation breakfasts and the banquets that followed the crownings. In June–July 1702, not long after Anne’s coronation in April, the cartouche of Charles i was replaced by a bronze cast of a bust of the same king, set upon a pedestal above the doorway.Footnote ³⁶ A fan print depicting the coronation banquet of George ii in 1727 shows it in situ, hovering above the proceedings, emblematic of the longevity and continuity of the monarchy (fig 12).Footnote ³⁷

Fig 12.

Fan print of the coronation banquet of George ii, 1727. The bust of Charles i is on the far left. Image: BM, Drawing 1891,0713.376, © The Trustees of the British Museum, reproduced with kind permission.

Route to the House of Commons and to the south end of the Palace of Westminster, 1661–1807

Up to the Restoration the south-west corner of the lower cloister had formed part of the much-prized Auditor of the Exchequer’s house. The sequestration of this area in 1660 by the Office of Works to form the new route to the House of Commons coincided with the reinstatement of former MP Sir Robert Pye to the post of Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer. It was a post that he had previously held from 1620 to 1653, but by the time of his return he was evidently incapable and perhaps was unable to resist the purloining of some important circulation space from his official residence.Footnote ³⁸

As the acknowledged entrance to the House of Commons, the doorway and this corner of the cloister would now have been the route taken by the Speaker’s procession through Westminster Hall and into the House, climbing the stairs within the wall of Westminster Hall to reach the Commons Lobby at principal floor level. According to John Hatsell, active as Clerk of the House of Commons from 1768 to 1797, by the 1670s ‘and till long after’ the Speaker ‘always passed through Westminster Hall on his way to the House of Commons, and saluted the courts of Common Pleas and King’s Bench, the judges rising from their seats, with their caps on, to receive and return the Speaker’s salute’.Footnote ³⁹

These two courts, meeting within staging at the south end of the hall that could be dismantled to make way for grand ceremonial events, remained a significant presence here in the eighteenth century. By 1718 a large additional doorway had been pierced through the centre of the south wall of Westminster Hall, accessed between their two courthouses and leading up steps into the Court of Wards and thence into the Commons Lobby,Footnote ⁴⁰ and the Speaker may well have processed that way thereafter. But although this new central doorway was now the main route from Westminster Hall to the southern end of the palace at the higher (principal) floor level, our doorway was still seen as ‘the enterance of the House of Commons’, as shown by the 1727 Brittannia Illustrata print (fig 6).Footnote ⁴¹ And as contemporary plans show, at ground floor level it remained the way to reach the southern end of the palace (eg fig 13).Footnote ⁴² Its worn pavers are evidence of the high level of the traffic it sustained.

Fig 13.

Detail from a plan of 1760–6 showing the doorway and the route leading from it at ground level through St Mary Undercroft (also at that time used by the Burgess Court of the City of Westminster), and then on into Old Palace Yard and the Long Gallery. Plan: Soane Museum SM 37/1/24, © Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, reproduced with kind permission.

Westminster Hall witnessed a number of changes over the next few decades: in 1739, the advent of William Kent’s demountable Gothick staging for the two law courts; in 1748–50, a major repair to the roof; and in 1780, the clearing out of the shops and stalls to allow both the raising of the floor level by one foot (305mm) (1780–2) and the refacing of the walls.Footnote ⁴³

As for the bronze bust of Charles i, after several decades of removal for state trials and replacement thereafter,Footnote ⁴⁴ in 1791 it was finally relocated from what was by this time its ‘obscure corner of Westminster-hall … to a safer and more honourable place’, the passageway from Westminster Hall to Old Palace Yard. This was as part of the works to accommodate the lengthy and complex trial of Warren Hastings (1788–95).Footnote ⁴⁵ The bust was still regarded as important enough to be featured and illustrated by Thomas Pennant in his popular guidebook to London, where he attributed its design to Bernini.Footnote ⁴⁶ Contemporary depictions of it, including Pennant’s own, show that it was, rather, after Hubert Le Sueur (fig 14).Footnote ⁴⁷

Fig 14.

Peter Mazell’s engraving of the Le Sueur bust of Charles i. Drawing: Royal Collection Trust RCIN 601957, © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii, reproduced with kind permission.

In 1794 the Auditor’s House passed to the Speaker of the House of Commons, thereby reuniting the whole of the west cloister walk under his control.Footnote ⁴⁸ The stairs leading up to the Commons from the west cloister were soon blocked off,Footnote ⁴⁹ although the way through our doorway to the southern end of the palace was maintained at ground level until 1807.Footnote ⁵⁰ This route went past the Le Sueur bust of Charles i, which by 1800 had unfortunately disappeared. Its subsequent fate is unknown.Footnote ⁵¹

The doorway from 1807–46

Between 1796 and 1807 James Wyatt repaired and remodelled the Speaker’s House as a grand Gothic Revival palace. As this lavish project drew to its protracted end, in 1807 the doorway was blocked up on the Westminster Hall side.Footnote ⁵² From that date, red bricks 60/65mm thick in a light grey mortar along with a narrow horizontal lacing timberFootnote ⁵³ are visible inside the passageway. A plan of 1834 shows that the protruding door jambs on the hall side were retained.Footnote ⁵⁴ The west cloister side, adjacent to a service area, remained open.Footnote ⁵⁵

In 1819–23 the roof of Westminster Hall, by now in a very decayed state, was repaired by Sir John Soane,Footnote ⁵⁶ and then in 1834–7 Sir Robert Smirke and his brother and partner Sydney Smirke refaced the walls of the hall with Huddleston stone and lowered the floor again, paving it with York stone.Footnote ⁵⁷ Smirke’s scaffolding and ladders, and the masons working on his project, played a vital part in saving Westminster Hall from the conflagration that engulfed the old palace on the night of 16 October 1834.Footnote ⁵⁸

At the southern end of the hall, the Smirkes’s refacing work revealed the blocked side of the doorway once more,Footnote ⁵⁹ and a short-lived access route to the cloister through it is suggested by a site plan made in c 1835 for the design competition for the new palace.Footnote ⁶⁰ By 1837 it was closed up again on the hall side, the door jambs and arch now having been hacked back flush with the main wall and the refacing masonry continued over them.Footnote ⁶¹

The doorway reopened, 1846–51

Although partly damaged in the fire of 1834, the Speaker’s House, including the west cloister walk, was soon pressed into service as temporary committee rooms, offices, kitchens, dining rooms and storehouses, as all around it Barry’s vast new Palace of Westminster took shape.Footnote ⁶² The use made of the door passage, then still open, is not recorded; but an 1843 plan for MPs shows it blocked off on the hall side, with no access between the cloister and the hall.Footnote ⁶³

By 1845 a bypass route via the cloister was needed to allow MPs ready access to their entrance in Old Palace Yard, to their temporary chamber and to their facilities at the north end of the site during Barry’s construction of St Stephen’s Entrance and St Stephen’s Hall.Footnote ⁶⁴ Passing round the perimeter of Westminster Hall,Footnote ⁶⁵ at first this route started in the medieval porch of St Stephen’s ChapelFootnote ⁶⁶ next to the south-west corner of the cloister and entered Westminster Hall via a new doorway cut through the wall very near its south end. In 1846, however, evidently needing this area for his works, Barry relocated the route’s starting-point to the north, reopening the blocked door passage by piercing a new aperture about 1.1m wide in the 1807 stone faced brickwork on the hall side (figs 5c, 9–10, 15).Footnote ⁶⁷

Fig 15.

MPs’ pocket plan of 1846 showing the doorway unblocked. Plan: Parliamentary Archives HC/LB/1/114/21, reproduced with kind permission.

That short-lived arrangement marked the final time that the door passage was used as an access route. By 1850 the aperture in its west side was no longer needed. Barry had by now – controversially – topped off his works in this area by demolishing the central window and central section of the Romanesque south wall of Westminster Hall to link it directly by a grand sweeping staircase to his new St Stephen’s Entrance.Footnote ⁶⁸

The door passage enclosed on both sides, 1851

In 1850–1 the lower cloister was magnificently and painstakingly restored for Charles Barry by his longstanding lead contractor Thomas Grissell.Footnote ⁶⁹ Embellished and adorned with Minton tiles and stained glass designed by Pugin,Footnote ⁷⁰ it was then once more put to use, but this time as a grand circulation and meeting space for MPs, and – to Barry’s great regret – as the members’ cloakroom.Footnote ⁷¹

Both sides of the door passage were blocked off as part of these works (figs 5c, 9–10). On the Westminster Hall side, Sydney Smirke’s refacing could now be reinstated over the 1846 aperture. Within the passage, two areas of yellow to pink brickwork from this blocking, on the west and east sides, are contemporaneous. From the same batch,Footnote ⁷² the bricks were set in a very hard grey cement mortar. The similarity of the jointing indicates that both sides were walled in by the same workman, who may be identified from his pencil inscription on the west wall’s plaster skim (fig 16). This reads:

Fig 16.

Graffito of 1851 written by Thomas Porter, bricklayer’s labourer. Photograph: © Adam Watrobski, reproduced with kind permission.

The inscription not only provides a precise date for the enclosure of the space but also names of several of Charles Barry’s workmen, who had evidently used the passage as a place to socialise and talk politics. All of them appear in the 1851 census. Thomas Porter, the ringleader and scribe, was a bricklayer’s labourer living in Water Street near the Strand;Footnote ⁷³ Richard Condon, a stonemason, was domiciled in St MaryleboneFootnote ⁷⁴ and the other four, also stonemasons, all inhabited Ponsonby Place.Footnote ⁷⁵

This graffito unlocks a rare and immediate insight into the lives of these workmen. Tom Porter, bricklayer or bricklayer’s labourer, perhaps the product of one of London’s elementary schools, was, in common with around two-thirds of working men at the time, literate.Footnote ⁷⁶ The group’s self-identification as ‘real demorcrats’ clearly links them with the kind of radical Chartist views that ran strongly within the building trades of London. In 1841–2 the stonemasons working at Westminster had waged a spectacular and highly damaging strike against Barry’s building contractors Grissell and Peto, bringing progress on the palace to a halt, and were militant in pursuing reduced working hours in the next few years.Footnote ⁷⁷ Bricklayers, and their labourers, whilst notorious for drinking and brawling, were likewise increasingly unionised.Footnote ⁷⁸

How Tom Porter made his final exit from the door passage is unclear, although some of the brickwork on the eastern side at low level, where not broken through in 1949, appears to have been laid from the outside. Perhaps a temporary hatch was formed there, which was subsequently bricked up once Porter had crawled out. The whole of this new wall was now concealed behind cloakroom furniture for MPs’ coats.

The passage hidden, 1851–1949

A major dynamite explosion, one of the final episodes in the Fenian bombing campaign, which in 1885 greatly damaged the area of Westminster Hall just outside,Footnote ⁷⁹ may have weakened the structure of the door passage’s ceiling but left its exterior fabric unscathed. A decade later, in December 1895, the brass plaque – described at the time as a tablet – was ceremoniously placed in Westminster Hall by the order of the First Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings (fig 4).Footnote ⁸⁰ Its text indicates the existence of the doorway, dates its creation to 1547, and states that ‘King Charles i passed through this archway, when on 4 January 1641–2, he attempted to arrest in the House of Commons the five members of Parliament. This access to the House of Commons fell into disuse after the year 1680’.

The plaque was one of two erected in Westminster Hall at this time to ‘bring to mind memorable incidents in our national history’,Footnote ⁸¹ an initiative arising from the antiquarian zeal of the Clerk of the House, Sir Reginald Douce Palgrave.Footnote ⁸² Well regarded as a proceduralist, Palgrave’s real passion was history, which he treated in a far more cavalier fashion than he did his official work.Footnote ⁸³ The plaque’s wording, which he supplied, was based on what he confesses in a little-known publication of 1869 to have been the enthusiastic suppositions of a ‘showman’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Such was the distinction of Palgrave’s office that this text has until very recently commanded evidential credence. Meanwhile, the existence of the passage within the wall of Westminster Hall had perhaps already faded from memory by his time, and by the mid-twentieth century it had certainly been forgotten.

The passage rediscovered and concealed again, 1949–51

In 1940 the southern and eastern ranges of St Stephen’s cloister were damaged beyond repair by a high explosive incendiary bomb, leaving the northern and western sides battered but still standing. A complex and painstaking project to reconstruct the lost parts and to repair the rest was overseen by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott from 1948 to 1951, in tandem with his rebuilding of the bombed Commons chamber. During the installation of air ducts in the west cloister, Scott’s workmen stumbled upon the door passage on 21 June 1949: a considerable surprise to all concerned.Footnote ⁸⁵ The space was carefully recorded in June and July in photographs and plans.Footnote ⁸⁶

Any idea of opening up this significant find had no chance of success in the face of pressures to maximise the space available for the MPs’ cloakroom, which was to be reinstated as soon as possible.Footnote ⁸⁷ Instead, Scott produced a scheme for a concealed access door,Footnote ⁸⁸ which was implemented during the final stages of the cloister’s restoration. On the cloister side, he arranged for an inconspicuous hinged panel to be cut through his elegant new cloakroom furniture (fig 3). This gave access to the present entrance: yellow bricks,Footnote ⁸⁹ set in a grey Portland cement mortar, were used both to block the temporary entrance and to construct the present entrance, which was given a concrete lintel (fig 17).

Fig 17.

The opening formed in 1950. Photograph: John Crook.

To mark the work, one of Scott’s stonemasons added his own graffito on the northern part of the western wall: ‘1950 Alex Leiper Mason Stonehaven’.Footnote ⁹⁰ The space was lit using vulcanised rubber electrical wiring and a galvanised metal switch. When rediscovered in 2018 this system sprang immediately into life, activating an Osram lightbulbFootnote ⁹¹ manufactured before the death of King George vi in 1952.Footnote ⁹²

The passage forgotten, 1951–2018

In 1951 the west cloister reverted to its earlier use as the MPs’ cloakroom.Footnote ⁹³ The door passage was probably now accessed on an occasional and casual basis, and two nonsensical graffiti scrawls (above) are likely to have been added to its walls between about 1951 and 1967. The latter date was when the west cloister was converted into desk space for backbench Labour MPs.Footnote ⁹⁴

The electrical supply to the door passage was never cut off, but from about the 1970s any knowledge of the passage or of the existence of the access panel seems once more to have been lost within the parliamentary community at large.Footnote ⁹⁵ From 1993 the west cloister walk was occupied by Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown and his team, and finally, from 1997 to 2017, the Parliamentary Labour Party, who most recently placed a sofa in front of the access panel.Footnote ⁹⁶ Cleared in 2017 for conservation work to begin, the lower cloister is currently unoccupied.