An Act to supply Means towards defraying the Expenses of providing Courts of Justice and the various Offices belonging thereto; and for other Purposes.
An Act to enable the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works and Public Buildings to acquire a Site for the Erection and Concentration of Courts of Justice, and of the various Offices belonging to the same.
For centuries these courts were located in Westminster Hall; however, in the 19th century, justices decided the courts needed a purpose-built structure. Much of the preparatory legal work was completed by Edwin Wilkins Field including promotion of the Courts of Justice Building Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. 48) and the Courts of Justice Concentration (Site) Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. 49). A statue of Field stands in the building.[2]Parliament paid £1,453,000 for the 6-acre (24,000 m2) site upon which 450 houses had to be demolished.[2]
The search for a design for the Law Courts was by way of a competition, a then-common approach to selecting a design and an architect. The competition ran from 1866 to 1867 and the twelve architects competing for the contract each submitted designs for the site.[3] In 1868 it was finally decided that George Edmund Street was the winner.[3] Building was started in 1873 by Messrs Bull & Sons of Southampton. Its masons led a serious strike at an early stage which threatened to extend to the other trades and caused a temporary stoppage of the works. In consequence, foreign workmen were brought in – mostly Germans. This aroused bitter hostility on the part of the men on strike, and the newcomers had to be housed and fed within the building. However, these disputes were eventually settled and the building took eight years to complete; it was officially opened by Queen Victoria on 4 December 1882.[2][4][5]
Street died before the building was opened, overcome by the work.[6] The building was paid for by cash accumulated in court from the estates of the intestate to the sum of £700,000. Oak work and fittings in the court cost a further £70,000 and with decoration and furnishing the total cost for the building came to under £1 million.[2]
The building was extended to the designs of Sir Henry Tanner to create the West Green building completed in 1912.[2] The Queen's Building followed in 1968 and the Thomas More Courts were completed in January 1990.[2]
The design involves a symmetrical main frontage of facing The Strand; the central section, which is stepped back, features an arched doorway leading to the Great Hall; it has a five-part window in a carved surround on the first floor and a gable containing a rose window above.[1] At the top of the gable is a sculpture of Jesus with a flèche behind.[1] There are also statues of Moses, Solomon and Alfred the Great, the four statues symbolising the pillars of English legal tradition.[8][9] There are towers containing lancet windows on either side of the central section with side wings beyond.[1] At the eastern end of the Strand frontage is a tall clock tower topped by a pyramidal roof, finial and flagpole;[1] it contains a clock and five bells (weighing a total of 8¼ tons) by Gillett, Bland & Co..[10]
Internally, courts are arranged off the Great Hall which runs north–south; there is a courtyard to the east with offices for courtroom staff arranged round the courtyard.[1] The Great Hall contains a bust of Queen Victoria by the sculptor, Alfred Gilbert.[11]
Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner has described the building as "an object lesson in free composition, with none of the symmetry of the classics, yet not undisciplined where symmetry is abandoned".[12] David Brownlee has claimed that it was influenced by the reformist political movement and the High Victorian architectural movement and has described it as a "regular mongrel affair"[13] while Turnor described it as the "last great secular building of the Gothic Revival".[14]
^Pickford, Chris, ed. (1995). Turret Clocks: Lists of Clocks from Makers' Catalogues and Publicity Materials (2nd ed.). Wadhurst, E. Sussex: Antiquarian Horological Society. pp. 81–94.
^Brownlee, David B. (12 July 2016). "That 'regular mongrel affair': G. G. Scott's design for the government offices". Architectural History. 28. Cambridge University Press: 159–197. doi:10.2307/1568531. JSTOR1568531. S2CID159612869.
^Turnor, Reginald (1950). Nineteenth Century Architecture in Britain. London: Batsford. p. 86.
Harper, Roger H. (1983). Victorian Architectural Competitions: An Index to British and Irish Architectural Competitions in The Builder, 1843–1900. Mansell Publishing Limited. ISBN0-7201-1685-6.
Further reading
Brownlee, D. (1984). The Law Courts: The Architecture of George Edmund Street. MIT Press.
Sir John Summerson, Victorian Architecture (1970) pp 77–107
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