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Did you know?

Did you know?

  • From the time of Edward the Confessor (1042 - 1066), the whole of the Parliament Square, from Westminster Abbey to the spot where the Supreme Court stands today, was consecrated ground, offering the right of sanctuary. To this day, the road to the side of the court is called "Little Sanctuary".
  • To construct the Middlesex Guildhall in 1913, the builders had to remove the original foundations of the Sanctuary Tower: "a raft of rubble five feet thick and seventy two and a half feet square, built on oak piles driven into the primeval sand of Thorney Island".
  • Lieutenant-Colonel Bernard Tindal Bosanquet, High Sheriff of Middlesex in 1897 (whose coat-of-arms can be seen in the Library when it is open to the public) was the father of Bernard Bosanquet, who invented "the googly", and grandfather of Reginald Bosanquet (the newsreader).
  • The Middlesex Guildhall housed foreign military courts during the Second World War.
  • Ewen Montagu, Recorder (judge) at the Middlesex Guildhall during the 1960s, was one of the people behind the Second World War deception plan "Operation Mincemeat". By floating a dead body off the Spanish coast with misleading documents in an area known to have German spies, the Allies successfully made the enemy believe they planned to invade Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily.
  • Stephen Wiltshire, one of the United Kingdom's most talented young artists, has turned his talent to sketching the Middlesex Guildhall.
  • Almost all the proceedings of The Supreme Court are filmed, and are sometimes broadcast on major TV and radio news networks. Proceedings are also streamed via our website: 20,000 view this stream each month.
  • The Supreme Court featured in the 'British Institutions' series by the Financial Times in April 2013.