From the Telegraph:

You may remember the wedding we had here in April,” says the Very Rev Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster, standing on a gallery 70ft above the Abbey floor. “Well, this is where the cameras were.”

Two bland bars of scaffolding mark the spot from where images of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were broadcast to two billion viewers worldwide. Someone has chalked up the word “pulpit”, with a helpful arrow. Follow it downwards and the vertiginous view of the Abbey is still, as Sir John Betjeman recognised, the best in Europe. Yet turn around, and you’re standing in a dusty old junk room of rusty ladders and hidden treasures – and very few people have seen either these or the view for themselves.

Dr Hall wants that to change. He is currently spearheading an ambitious £12 million project to turn the triforium, as this first-floor space above the nave is known, into a public museum by 2016. On Monday the project received a boost when the Prince of Wales became patron of the fund-raising appeal.

There’s still rather a lot of work to do. Architects will have to start by designing an external lift – access to the triforium is currently via a shabby, private door in Poets’ Corner in the south of the Abbey, under the bust of Ben Jonson. Seventy-six windy stone steps, punctuated by intriguing signs such as “To library roof”, bring you panting to the top. Once there, you’re met by a not-entirely-welcome blast of hot air from the Victorian heating pipes.

You’d run up those stairs a dozen times, though, as the triforium actually offers several of the best views in Europe. There’s the classic BBC one, of course, straight back down the aisle towards the west door. But there’s also a unique perspective immediately below on the beautiful Cosmati Pavement, fashioned from Purbeck marble in the 13th century and restored last May. Move 30 paces north on the spacious balcony and you’re offered a stunning angle on Wilberforce, Gladstone and both Pitts. Or turn your gaze east, out of a window filtering dappled Autumn sunshine, and you can look the Palace of Westminster in the eye.
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