This stuff is older than Stonehenge.

What You’ll Discover in This Story:

Archaeologists working at the Palace of Westminster have uncovered artifacts spanning 6,000 years of history.

The team found stone tools dating back to around 4300 B.C.E., suggesting the area was once home to a community of hunters and fishers. More than 60 flint tools were recovered, including one carefully shaped item that may date to the late Mesolithic period.

The Palace of Westminster, one of London’s most iconic buildings and home to the Houses of Parliament, sits atop this historically rich site. The discoveries were made as part of a three-year archaeological investigation led by the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority. Researchers drilled 14 trial pits and 10 geoarchaeological boreholes, including in areas historically used for industrial activity.

Artifacts found across the site cover multiple periods: a medieval leather boot and shoe soles about 800 years old; fragments of elaborately decorated clay tobacco pipes likely used by stonemasons after the 1834 fire; a Roman altar piece more than 2,000 years old; a 14th–15th-century lead badge shaped like a flowering heart, commonly used as a seal or on wedding rings; a 19th-century five-pint beer jug; a medieval floor tile; and a stone crucible used to heat lead, possibly for crafting window frames in the medieval palace.

These discoveries reveal the rich, layered history beneath one of London’s most famous landmarks.