Westminster’s Central Lobby tiles restored after nine-year project Nicholas Cecil They bore the footsteps of Churchill, Gladstone and other political greats and now nine years of painstaking work has been completed with the last of nearly 60,000 brightly-coloured new tiles laid in Westminster’s famous Central Lobby. The historic jigsaw was first put down some 150 years ago on the floor of Parliament’s most public meeting place. But it became so worn that the parliamentary authorities launched a project nearly a decade ago to restore it to its former glory with new encaustic (“burnt in”) tiles, each individually handmade. The key central tile has now been put in place by stone mason Andy Midwinter in time for the State Opening of Parliament on May 11.