00:00The Archives of Parliament were stored in the Victoria Tower, which at the time that it was completed was the
00:07tallest square tower in the world.
00:10So the archives were stored in 12 floors of the Victoria Tower, and to get to them involved going up
00:18two very small lifts.
00:20And so one of the really great things that this move means is that in a disaster salvage scenario where
00:27we see a fire or a flood, the records would be very difficult to rescue, almost impossible to rescue from
00:36the Victoria Tower.
00:38Moving to the National Archives means that not only the records are in a modern repository that meets current environmental
00:46standards,
00:47but also in a disaster salvage scenario, they would be saved and looked after.
00:51The Archives of Parliament from the Palace of Westminster have been successfully relocated to the National Archives in Kew.
01:01Archived documents include those relating to the gunpowder plot, such as the Thanksgiving Act of 1605.
01:08The institution in West London holds documents dating back more than 1,000 years, and forms part of the government.
01:17A number of documents relating to Britain's most famous treason plot are among 4 million records transferred from the Archives
01:28of Parliament to the National Archives.
01:31This project is only now complete, five years after it first began.
01:40The transfer of archives was made from their former home in Victoria Tower at the Palace of Westminster,
01:50and, as reported by the Guardian newspaper, has added the equivalent of 16 and a half kilometres of records to
02:03the 174 and a half linear kilometres of documents already housed in Kew.
02:13So the records, our records have been in Parliament since 1497, and so moving them here means that we're moving
02:24almost 600 years of history.
02:28But also, the earlier records of Parliament are already held by the National Archives, so we are joining them together.
02:36Oh, well, I'd say a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but you can't have liquids near the documents.
02:42So, yes, as you can imagine, moving millions of documents from using two very small lifts in a historic building
02:54requires a huge amount of organisation, kind of grit and goodwill.
02:59So...
02:59Yes, exactly.
