The whole building occupies an irregular site of about eight acres. Its longest front (the river front) is 940 feet in length, each wing having a frontage of 120 feet, and the terrace occupying the remaining 700 feet. Its greatest width (exclusive of Westminster Hall) is about 340 feet. It contains above 500 rooms, and includes residences for eighteen different officers of the two Houses, of whom the principal are the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Serjeant-at-arms, the Usher of the Black Rod, and the Librarians of the Houses of Lords and Commons. It thus provides for a resident population of about 200. This large mass of building receives light and air, not only from its external fronts, but from eleven internal quadrangles, many of considerable area. In actual size, and in the extent and variety of its requirements, it is equalled by few buildings of modern times. The only portions of the old building, which it was found possible to retain, are Westminster Hall, the Cloister Court, and the crypt of St. Stephen’s Chapel, under the present St. Stephen’s Hall. The main lines of the plan will be easily discerned, suggested as they are by the nature of the site, the position of Westminster Hall, and the duality of the object of the building. The first and most important is the line of public approach through Westminster Hall. At the end of the hall there is an ascent by a grand flight of steps to a landing under the great window (to which there is a shorter public communication through St. Margaret’s porch, from Old Palace Yard), and thence by another flight into St. Stephen’s Hall. This hall is ninety-five feet in length, twenty-nine in width, and forty-three in height to the pitch of the groined roof. It contains several statues of celebrated statesmen, most of which are very beautiful as works of art, though executed on so large a scale as to be detrimental to the effect of the hall. It is intended to cover with appropriate frescoes the panels and the large arched recesses at the end of the hall. An archway at the east end gives entrance to the central hall, octagon on plan and vaulted. Its vault is the largest octagon vault known, in which a central pillar is not used, and the lantern is sustained by a cone of brickwork rising above the vault. From this point the public approaches diverge. To the right and left corridors open into the lobbies of the Houses of Lords and Commons. At the east end another corridor opens into the “witness hall,” from which access is had on the principal floor to the Peers’ libraries and committee-rooms and the Commons’ libraries, which, with a central “conference room,” occupy the whole curtain of the river front; a staircase leads to the upper floor, containing another long range of committee-rooms.[104]