ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the development of David Boswell Reid’s original scheme focusing on the design of the House of Lords, which was the first chamber to be designed and completed. Between 1840 and 1846, when Reid was in charge of the ventilation of the entire Palace, the focus was on designing and constructing the basement, the River Front and the House of Lords. The scale of the proposed physical changes to the original 1836 design of the Palace was significant and in 1844 the governance of the project became the subject of two separate inquiries by Select Committees from both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The ventilation network inside the House of Lords was developed over a period of three years. It began with the design of the primary infrastructure for the central air supply, which was intimately intertwined with the construction of the masonry structure on the ground floor and basement level.