Designed about 1850 by the architect A. W. N. Pugin (d.1852) in the medieaval style for Charles Barry's New Palace of Westminster, and bearing the VR Gothic cypher for Victoria Regina. Its crenellated cornice and Elizabethan linen-fold paenels correspond with the architectural woodwork of the Palace, which replaced the mediaeval Houses of Parliament, destroyed by fire in 1834. Pugin, author of Details of Ancient Timber Houses of the 15th and 16th Centuries, 1837, and Gothic Furniture of the 15th Century, 1835, was engaged in providing designs for the Palace's furnishings from 1844. Messrs. Gillows of Oxford Street and Lancaster gained the contract for furnishing the bedrooms, and a drawing for a related wardrobe is included in their Estimate Sketch Book, for 3 April 1852, no. 5832 (Westminster Public Library). Included with the manufacturing costs of the wardrobe is the name of the cabinet-maker John Herbert, which can also be found inscribed inside this wardrobe. The foliate and fretted tinned-iron metalwork was supplied by Messrs. Hardman and Iliffe of Birmingham, and it has been suggested that this was assembled in the Thames Bank Workshops at Westminster.
The design for the chest of drawers section is included in Gillows' Estimate Sketch Book, 1852, no. 3828. R. Cooke illustrates on identical wardrobes, now in the Resident Engineer's flat, in his Palace of Westminster, 1987, p. 324. For a further discussion, see: A Report by The Victoria & Albert Museum Concerning the Furniture for the House of Lords, London, 1974
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The New Palace of Westminster