In 2018 unpublished archaeological evidence was discovered recording a doorway and passageway concealed inside the Romanesque wall of Westminster Hall, near the south-east corner. Although commemorated by a bronze plaque in situ, their existence had largely been forgotten. Further investigations revealed an access panel in the 1951 cloakroom fittings in adjoining St Stephen’s cloister: this was located, and the space accessed, seemingly for the first time since c 1952. The many features of interest found within included the doorcase and soffits of a great doorway and iron pintles for the doors; Purbeck flagstones on the floor; complex masonry and plaster from several different eras; graffiti by masons from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a still-functional Osram lightbulb dating from the early 1950s; and wooden joists supporting the masonry of the ceiling. Isotope dating of the timbers produced a date of 1659, and works accounts showed that the doorway and passageway were created in 1660–1, to form a ceremonial route for the coronation of Charles ii. Further archaeological and historical investigations have enabled the authors to establish a full chronology for the changing fabric and uses of the doorway and passageway from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, and to trace the masons who walled in the space in 1851. They have also established why the brass plaque in Westminster Hall marking the space erroneously ascribes it with Tudor origins: that ‘fake history’ was created by an over-enthusiastic late-nineteenth century Clerk of the House of Commons.

Presenting research conducted by the ‘St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster’ project at the University of York, this article focuses on the Great Seal devised in 1649 and re-issued in 1651 to enable the Commonwealth to function following the execution of Charles i. As a familiar and ancient image of monarchy, the Great Seal posed an obvious challenge to the authority of the Rump Parliament. A radical new design, authorised by parliamentary committee and executed by engraver Thomas Simon, replaced royal iconography with images of popular sovereignty and nationhood: a map of England and Ireland on the obverse of the Seal, and the interior of the House of Commons chamber (formerly St Stephen’s Chapel) on the reverse. The result was a striking evocation of political authority located in the House of Commons and deriving from the English people. Engravings of the Commons chamber, in circulation since the 1620s, are identified as a probable source for Simon’s work. The Great Seal also re-asserted England’s dominion over Ireland and the waters surrounding the British Isles. Overall, this article argues for continuity as well as alteration in the iconography of the Great Seal of England, at a time of revolutionary political change.