However, it can be viewed from the two adjoining streets, as a result of Edward Middleton Barry, who also assisted with its landscaping, having used railings rather than walls or fencing in its design.

The yard has existed since about the year 1100, but was greatly reduced in the 18th century to allow for the construction of new streets and buildings, the most notable of which is the wing taking up the eastern end and having the most prominent tower of the current palace.

Before latest incarnations of the palace, the yard was an open public space used diversely such as for speeches, tournaments, pilloryings, and executions.

The yard is laid out as a garden with a formal avenue of lime trees, benches of Portland stone and a central lawn surrounded by an oval roadway.

A rapid increase in the level of the Thames necessitated the construction of a river wall on the yard's eastern side in the 12th century.

[4] It was reclaimed by laying down cobbles on successive layers of debris that had accumulated over the years[5] and was laid out as an open space by the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

[8] On one occasion, when Catherine of Aragon married Arthur, Prince of Wales in 1501, a grand tournament was held in New Palace Yard.

They proceeded into the yard accompanied by a pageant-car which was drawn by four animals and carried a "fair young lady" on "a goodly chair of cloth of gold".

[8] Public access to New Palace Yard was restricted from 1866 after a demonstration held in Hyde Park for parliamentary reform turned violent.

[14] On 22 March 2017, an Islamic terrorist crashed a car into the perimeter fence of the Palace grounds, after driving into pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge.

[15][16] After abandoning the vehicle, he ran into the New Palace Yard and fatally stabbed PC Keith Palmer, an unarmed police officer guarding the Carriage Gates.