Part of Parliament: A day in the life of Westminster’s Master Locksmith
4 min read
Thousands of people work in the Palace of Westminster to keep the heart of our democracy beating. In the first of a new series, we hear from locksmith Peter Wosahlo on managing the estimated 25,000 locks on the Estate
I’m passionate about locks anyway. It’s been my hobby as well as my job for the past 43 years. In the Palace of Westminster, it’s mainly old Victorian and Edwardian locks – what I call old traditional locks - and that’s a core part of what we do. It’s just a pleasure to work on locks like that. You can’t go down to the local hardware store and buy a replacement. We have to refurbish and replace the locks ourselves and cut new keys by hand, which can take a couple of hours for the more intricate old keys. Our workshop is right next door to where they stored the gunpowder for the gunpowder plot.
Our main aim is to keep the parliamentary estate secure and make sure both Houses are always able to sit. There’s no typical day but I suppose it starts early in the morning with security to open up. Then the jobs just come in. So, it could be anything from a door that can’t be unlocked to people losing their keys or finding their locks for their safes or cupboards are jammed. We had one job where they couldn’t open the door of the House of Commons. But we managed to get it open and repair the lock before the MPs got a chance to see.
In the Palace of Westminster, there’s 1,100 doors. On the parliamentary estate, we estimate there are 25,000 or 30,000 locks we’re dealing with, including all the cabinets, pedestals, lockers, that sort of thing. It’s quite a lot of work just cutting keys for new starters day-to-day. It’s quite a hectic job at times.
Occasionally you get an MP locked in a room. I’ve had an MP locked in the toilet – didn’t know the name of the guy – but they had left the Chamber and gone to use the loo. Of course, he didn’t know which loo it was so I was busily running around the various toilets, but I couldn’t find him. Eventually, he managed to get himself out and was back in the Chamber. We never found out who it was. We get quite a lot of members of the public locked in. We had a young guy not so long ago – when we found him he was quite happy sitting on his mobile phone.
The best part of the job is all the people you come across. I was in Central Lobby once and saw the Dalai Lama walking across. How many places are you going to be working where you get to see someone like that? Interesting people are coming in and you’re part and parcel of it every day – making history, really. You can’t beat a job like that.
Personally, I do take my work home, because I enjoy it. It’s always on my mind. We had an Edward VII cabinet delivered up into the Queen’s robing room last year and the special tools I’ve got to open it weren’t long enough because it was quite a thick door. So, I went home – I’ve got a workshop at home – and I made up an extended tool. I was so interested to get this cupboard open – I’d looked underneath and it had Edward VII written there, so it was quite exciting. I couldn’t wait to get back in in the morning and get it open and get some keys made for it. You never get fed up of doing that sort of thing.
As a locksmith, you need to be patient. It’s not like it’s made out to be on the telly. I can’t just get a hairclip and flick it and the door opens.
I don’t think I’ll ever retire. It’s one of those jobs where although I can’t shimmy up drainpipes anymore and break into locked places I can always cut keys and do the more intricate work.
It’s moving towards electronic security – in cars and with building passes – but I think there will always be room for the traditional stuff. People like to feel the comfort of turning a lock and hearing that lock click. It comes around full circle. We may have become a bit of a throwaway society but I can’t see my traditional side of the job going away any time soon.
Peter Wosahlo was talking to Emilio Casalicchio
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