Mary, we're looking at some incredibly precious archival resources over there's the death warrant of King Charles I and a record of his trial.

In front of us is the draft declaration of rights and the Bill of Rights itself from 1689 from the glorious revolution.

These are very precious to both parliamentary history and to British history.

How are these documents kept and maintained here? All these documents are kept along with a number of other

important constitutional documents in the Victoria Tower, which is the home of the parliamentary

archives. The Victoria Tower is built as a modern archive repository. So it is air-conditioned

for the keeping of paper and parchment.

The environment is maintained at a constant 16 and a half degrees C and the humidity is kept at relative

55%. And those are the appropriate conditions for keeping paper and parchment in as good

environment as we possibly can. So hopefully they'll survive for the next 500 or how many years they will last. The death warrants, the Bill of Rights and the trial document are all

parchment, which is the material that important documents were made from. They're made out of a

high-grade kind of parchment called Bellum, Animal Skin, that is. I'm told that most of our

parchment is sheepskin, although Bellum can also be calf or goat. Velim is very durable indeed. I'm told that most of our parchment is sheepskin, although vellum can also be calf or goat.

Velim is very durable indeed. I'm told that the oldest surviving parchment in existence is about

2,000 years old. So if you keep it in the right conditions, the documents could survive another 2,000

years. Although the documents themselves have survived remarkably well over the years, they haven't

always been kept in very good conditions.

All these documents are House of Lords documents. The reason that these survive when others haven't

is precisely because they were Lord's documents and they were stored after they were created in the

Jewel Tower. The Jewel Tower is one of the very few surviving bits of the medieval palace of Westminster.

You can go and visit today as a member of the public.

It's an English Heritage building.

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