Lord Great Chamberlain
Great Officer of State for England
The Lord Great Chamberlain of England is the sixth of the Great Officers of State, ranking beneath the lord privy seal but above the lord high constable. The office of Lord Great Chamberlain was first created around 1126 and has been in continuous existence since 1138. The incumbent is Rupert Carington, 7th Baron Carrington.
Duties
The Lord Great Chamberlain is entrusted by the Sovereign with custody of the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the British Parliament, and serves as his representative therein. From the Restoration until 1963, the Lord Great Chamberlain was responsible for physical plant and facility management throughout the Palace of Westminster, in effect serving as a property manager for the entire parliamentary estate. Today, the Lord Great Chamberlain enjoys plenary jurisdiction in those precincts of the Palace of Westminster not assigned to either the House of Lords or the House of Commons: namely, the Royal Apartments, Central Lobby, and the Crypt Chapel. To this end, the Lord Great Chamberlain is responsible for the use, preservation, and occupation of such spaces. In addition, the Lord Great Chamberlain is one of the three commissioners who exercise joint control and maintenance over Westminster Hall; the other commissioners are the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords and the Speaker of the House of Commons.
The Lord Great Chamberlain performs other less routine functions as custodian of the Palace of Westminster. For example, the Lord Great Chamberlain welcomes foreign heads of state visiting the Palace of Westminster.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1798290. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1126, 1138 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lord Great Chamberlain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.