Parliament Square

Lore & Background

Parliament Square was laid out in 1868 in order to open up the space around the Palace of Westminster and improve traffic flow. A substantial amount of property was cleared from the site, and the architect responsible was Sir Charles Barry. The square originally included the Buxton Memorial Fountain, which was removed in 1949 and relocated to nearby Victoria Tower Gardens in 1957. The square also featured some of London's earliest traffic signals. In 1949, a redesign of the Parliament Square area was prepared by the architect George Grey Wornum (1888–1957). Plans to redesign the square predated the Second World War, with the Ministry of Transport proposing that a larger central island was necessary to allow traffic more room in Great George Street. Following the war, the London County Council submitted a revised plan that was approved by the Ministry of Transport and enacted by Parliament through the Parliament Square (Improvements) Act 1949. The Act was required due to the mixed ownership of the land. The redesign included new roads, pavements, and landscaping works in the area. As Great George Street was widened and an existing road realigned, the Buxton Memorial Fountain had to be removed. Because Victorian architecture was unpopular at the time, some Members of Parliament argued that it should not be re-erected; at least one described it as having 'no artistic merit whatever.' The Act ultimately permitted its removal but required its reinstatement. The central garden of the square was transferred from the Parliamentary Estate to the control of the Greater London Authority under the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

Reader's Guide

Buildings looking upon the square include the churches Westminster Abbey and St Margaret's, Westminster, the Middlesex Guildhall which is the seat of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Government Offices Great George Street serving HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs, and Portcullis House. Roads that branch off the Parliament Square are St Margaret Street (towards Millbank), Broad Sanctuary (towards Victoria Street), Great George Street (towards Birdcage Walk), Parliament Street (leading into Whitehall) and Bridge Street (leading onto Westminster Bridge). The square is home to twelve statues of British, Commonwealth, and Anglosphere political figures. They are listed here in anti-clockwise order, beginning with Winston Churchill's statue, which faces Parliament. Parliament Square sometimes features all of the British flags, the flags of the United Kingdom, its four countries, the county flags and the three flags of the Crown Dependencies and the sixteen heraldic shields of the British Overseas Territories. Alongside all of the British flags, Parliament Square also has all of the 56 flags of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Did You Know?

• Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square started on 2 June 2001 and he left his post only once, on 10 May 2004, when he was arrested for failing to leave during a security alert.
• On 9 August 2025, a demonstration led to the arrest of 532 people—the largest single-day arrest by the Metropolitan Police in the previous 10 years.