2. The story of Big Ben

CONTENTS

1. General

2. The story of Big Ben

3. The Clock

4. Significance in popular culture

5. Great Bell

6. Elizabeth Tower

7. Movement

8. Malfunctions, breakdowns, and other outages

9. Chimes

10. The bells of Big Ben are to be silenced

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. General

Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, and often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower. The tower is now officially called the Elizabeth Tower, after being renamed to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The Elizabeth Tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and is the third-tallest free-standing clock tower. The tower was completed in 1858. The Elizabeth Tower has become one of the most prominent symbols of both London and England and is often in the establishing shot of films set in the city.

The clock and dials were designed by Augustus Pugin. The clock dials are set in an iron frame 23 feet (7.0 m) in diameter, supporting 312 pieces of opal glass, rather like a stained-glass window. Some of the glass pieces may be removed for inspection of the hands. The surround of the dials is gilded. At the base of each clock dial in gilt letters is the Latin inscription: ‘DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM’, Which means O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First.

The origin of the nickname Big Ben is the subject of some debate. The nickname was applied first to the Great Bell; it may have been named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the Great Bell, or after boxing's English Heavyweight Champion Benjamin Caunt. Now Big Ben is often used, by extension, to refer to the clock, the tower and the bell collectively, although the nickname is not universally accepted as referring to the clock and tower. Some authors of works about the tower, clock and bell sidestep the issue by using the words Big Ben first in the title, then going on to clarify that the subject of the book is the clock and tower as well as the bell.

2. The story of Big Ben

At 9'-0" diameter, 7'-6" high, and weighing in at 13 tons 10 cwts 3 qtrs 15lbs (13,760 Kg), the hour bell of the Great Clock of Westminster – known worldwide as 'Big Ben' – is the most famous bell ever cast at Whitechapel. This picture, painted by William T. Kimber, the head moulder responsible for casting the bell, shows George Mears with his wife and daughter inspecting the casting prior to despatch. Big Ben was cast on Saturday 10th April 1858, but its story begins more than two decades earlier.

On 16th October 1834, fire succeeded where Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters had failed on 5th November 1605, and destroyed the Palace of Westminster, long the seat of the British government. Those few bits of the Old Palace that survived the fire – most notably Westminster Hall, which was built between 1097 and 1099 by William Rufus – were incorporated into the new buildings we know today, along with many new features.

In 1844, Parliament decided that the new buildings for the Houses of Parliament, by then under construction, should incorporate a tower and clock. The commission for this work was awarded to the architect Charles Barry, who initially invited just one clockmaker to produce a design and quotation. The rest of the trade objected to this, demanding the job be put out to competitive tender. The Astronomer Royal, George Airy was appointed to draft a specification for the clock. One of his requirements was that:

"the first stroke of the hour bell should register the time, correct to within one second per day, and furthermore that it should telegraph its performance twice a day to Greenwich Observatory, where a record would be kept."

Most clockmakers of the day considered such accuracy unnattainable for a large tower clock driving striking mechanisms and heavy hands exposed to wind and weather and lobbied for a lesser specification. However, Airy was adamant that the first specification be adhered to. Due to this impasse, Parliament appointed barrister Edmund Beckett Denison as co-referee with Airy. Edmund Beckett Denison, later Sir Edmund Beckett, the first Baron Grimthorpe, was a difficult man. He was described by one writer as:

"zealous but unpopular, self-accredited expert on clocks, locks, bells, buildings, as well as many branches of law, Denison was one of those people who are almost impossible as colleagues, being perfectly convinced that they know more than anybody about everything – as unhappily they often do."

Denison decided to apply himself to the problem of the clock. It was 1851 before he came up with a design which could meet the exacting specification. The clock Denison designed was built by Messrs E.J. Dent & Co., and completed in 1854. The tower was not ready until 1859, so the clock was kept on test at Dent's works for over five years. (During that time, Denison invented a new gravity escapement and a trial clock was tested and approved by the Astronomer Royal. This clock is believed to be now in use as the church clock at St. Dunstan's, at Cranbrook in Kent.)

Next came the bells, and Denison discovered that Barry, now Sir Charles Barry, had specified a 14 ton hour bell but had made no provision for its production or for that of the four smaller quarter chime bells. Denison's studies of clocks had included bells and he had developed his own ideas as to how they should be designed and made.

The largest bell ever cast in Britain up to that time had been 'Great Peter' at York Minster. This weighed just 10¾ tons, so it is not surprising the bellfounders were wary of bidding for the contract to produce the new bell, particularly since Denison insisted on his own design for the shape of the bell as well as his own recipe for the bellmetal. In both respects his requirements varied significantly from traditional custom and practice. Eventually, a bell was made to his specification, albeit somewhat oversize at 16 tons, by John Warner & Sons at Stockton-on-Tees on 6th August 1856, but this cracked irreparably while under test in the Palace Yard at Westminster. It was then that Denison, who now had QC after his name, turned to the Whitechapel foundry….

George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572. It took a week To break up the old bell, three furnaces were required to melt the metal, and the mould was heated all day before the actual casting, the first time this had been done in British bell-founding. It took 20 minutes to fill the mould with molten metal, and 20 days for the metal to solidify and cool. After the bell had been tested in every way by Mears, Denison approved it before it left the foundry.

Transporting the bell the few miles from the foundry to the Houses of Parliament was a major event. Traffic stopped as the bell, mounted on a trolley drawn by sixteen brightly beribboned horses, made its way over London Bridge, along Borough Road, and over Westminster Bridge. The streets had been decorated for the occasion and enthusiastic crowds cheered the bell along the route.

The bells of the Great Clock of Westmister rang across London for the first time on 31st May 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to decide on a suitable name for the great hour bell. During the course of the debate, and amid the many suggestions that were made, Chief Lord of the Woods and Forests, Sir Benjamin Hall, a large and ponderous man known affectionately in the House as "Big Ben", rose and gave an impressively long speech on the subject. When, at the end of this oratorical marathon, Sir Benjamin sank back into his seat, a wag in the chamber shouted out: "Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?" The house erupted in laughter; Big Ben had been named. This, at least, is the most commonly accepted story. However, according to the booklet written for the old Ministry of Works by Alan Phillips:

"Like other nice stories, this has no documentary support; Hansard failed to record the interjection. The Times had been alluding to 'Big Ben of Westminster' since 1856. Probably, the derivation must be sought more remotely. The current champion of the prize ring was Benjamin Caunt, who had fought terrific battles with Bendigo, and who in 1857 lasted sixty rounds of a drawn contest in his final appearance at the age of 42. As Caunt at one period scaled 17 stone (238 lbs, or 108 kilogrammes), his nickname was Big Ben, and that was readily bestowed by the populace on any object the heaviest of its class. So the anonymous MP may have snatched at what was already a catchphrase."

In September, a mere two months after it officially went into service, Big Ben cracked. Once again Denison's belief that he knew more about bells than the experts was to blame for he had used a hammer more than twice the maximum weight specified by George Mears. Big Ben was taken out of service and for the next three years the hours were struck on the largest of the quarter-bells. Eventually, a lighter hammer was fitted, a square piece of metal chipped out of the soundbow, and the bell given an eighth of a turn to present an undamaged section to the hammer. This is the bell as we hear it today, the crack giving it its distinctive but less-than-perfect tone.

Not prepared to admit any error on his part, Denison befriended one of the Foundry's moulders, plied him with drink, and got him to bear false witness that it was poor casting, disguised with filler, that had caused the cracking. (A close examination of Big Ben in 2002 failed to find a trace of filler, incidentally.) With reputations at stake this led to a court case, which Denison rightly lost. (With all the passion and intrigue involved, from the commissioning of Big Ben through to the court case, it's surprising these events have never been turned into a TV drama.) Nor was this the end of the story. Denison, obviously aggrieved at having lost the court case, continued to badmouth the Foundry. Twenty years later he was unwise enough to do so in print and this led to a second libel trial. And he lost that case, too.

In mid-2002, we uncovered a dusty old boxfile bearing a label that read "Stainbank v Beckett 1881". It contained a complete transcript of the second trial between the Foundry – this time in the person of founder Robert Stainbank – and Sir Edmund Beckett Denison. Initially, we thought we'd discovered a transcript of the original, Big Ben trial. While it's a shame we don't possess a transcript of the first trial (at least, none we've yet found) there is apparently a copy still extant at the Palace of Westminster. This may, however, be the only existing transcript of the later trial. That original, handwritten transcript will be lodged in the Foundry library after a typed record has been made.

One final point of interest is that the transcript mentions the lawyer for the Foundry using a small model to demonstrate the principles of bell-casting. This would almost certainly have been the same small, exquisitely crafted model currently on display in the Foundry's lobby museum area.

Big Ben remains the largest bell ever cast at Whitechapel. Visitors to the foundry pass through a full size profile of the bell that frames the main entrance as they enter the building. The original moulding gauge employed to form the mould used to cast Big Ben hangs on the end wall of the foundry above the furnaces to this very day.

Among the gift items availablthe gift items available from Whitechapel Bell Foundry is the book 'Big Ben: The Bell, The Clock, and The Tower' by Peter MacDonald, and a finely detailed miniature of the bell itself. These can be found on our merchandising page.

3. The Clock

The clock was the largest in the world and is still the largest in Great-Britain. The clock faces have a diameter of almost 25ft (7.5m). The hour hand is 9ft or 2.7m long and the minute hand measures 14ft (4.25m) long.
The clock is known for its reliability, it has rarely failed during its long life span. Even after the nearby House of Commons was destroyed by bombing during World War II, the clock kept on chiming. The clock's mechanism, designed by Edmund Beckett Denison, has a remarkable accuracy. The clock's rate is adjusted by simply adding small pennies on the shoulder of the pendulum.

4. Significance in popular culture

The clock has become a symbol of the United Kingdom and London, particularly in the visual media. When a television or film-maker wishes to indicate a generic location in Britain, a popular way to do so is to show an image of the tower, often with a red double-decker bus or black cab in the foreground.

The sound of the clock chiming has also been used this way in audio media, but as the Westminster Quarters are heard from other clocks and other devices, the unique nature of this sound has been considerably diluted. Big Ben is a focus of New Year celebrations in the United Kingdom, with radio and TV stations tuning to its chimes to welcome the start of the New Year. As well, to welcome in 2012, the clock tower itself was lit with fireworks that exploded at every toll of Big Ben. Similarly, on Remembrance Day, the chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and the start of two minutes' silence. Londoners who live an appropriate distance from the Tower and Big Ben can, by means of listening to the chimes both live and on analogue radio, hear the bell strike thirteen times. This is possible due to what amounts to an offset between live and electronically transmitted chimes since the speed of sound is a lot slower than the speed of radio waves. Guests are invited to count the chimes aloud as the radio is gradually turned down.

ITN's News at Ten opening sequence formerly featured an image of the Elizabeth Tower with the sound of Big Ben's chimes punctuating the announcement of the news headlines. The Big Ben chimes (known within ITN as "The Bongs") continue to be used during the headlines and all ITV News bulletins use a graphic based on the Westminster clock dial. Big Ben can also be heard striking the hour before some news bulletins on BBC Radio 4 (6 pm and midnight, plus 10 pm on Sundays) and the BBC World Service, a practice that began on 31 December 1923. The sound of the chimes are sent in real time from a microphone permanently installed in the tower and connected by line to Broadcasting House.

The Tower has appeared in many films, most notably in the 1978 version of The Thirty Nine Steps, in which the hero, Richard Hannay, attempted to halt the clock's progress (to prevent a linked bomb detonating) by hanging from the minute hand of its western dial. In the fourth James Bond film, Thunderball, a mistaken extra strike of Big Ben on the hour is designated by criminal organisation SPECTRE to be the signal that the British Government has acceded to its nuclear extortion demands. It was also used in the filming of Shanghai Knights starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, and was depicted as being partially destroyed in the Doctor Who episode "Aliens of London". Big Ben was also featured in the closing scene of James McTeigue's film V for Vendetta in which a futuristic depiction of Guy Fawkes succeeds in blowing up parliament, and the tower's bells and pendulum are sounded with a final screech at the beginning of the explosion. The apparent "thirteen chimes" detailed above was also a major plot device in the Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons episode, "Big Ben Strikes Again". It has featured prominently in several animated Walt Disney films, including The Great Mouse Detective, Peter Pan and Cars 2.

At the close of the polls for the 2010 General Election the results of the national exit poll were projected onto the south side of the Elizabeth Tower.

On 27 July 2012, starting at 8:12 a.m, Big Ben chimed thirty times, to welcome in the London Olympic Games (i.e. the 30th Olympiad), which officially began that day.

In 2008 a survey of 2,000 people found that the tower was the most popular landmark in the United Kingdom. It has also been named as the most iconic film location in London

5. Great Bell

The main bell, officially known as the Great Bell, is the largest bell in the tower and part of the Great Clock of Westminster. The bell is better known by the nickname Big Ben.

The original bell was a 16 ton (16.3-tonne) hour bell, cast on 6 August 1856 in Stockton-on-Tees by John Warner & Sons. The bell was named in honour of Sir Benjamin Hall, and his name is inscribed on it. However, another theory for the origin of the name is that the bell may have been named after a contemporary heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt.[ It is thought that the bell was originally to be called Victoria or Royal Victoria in honour of Queen Victoria, but that an MP suggested the nickname during a Parliamentary debate; the comment is not recorded in Hansard.

Since the tower was not yet finished, the bell was mounted in New Palace Yard. Cast in 1856, the first bell was transported to the tower on a trolley drawn by sixteen horses, with crowds cheering its progress. Unfortunately, it cracked beyond repair while being tested and a replacement had to be made. The bell was recast on 10 April 1858 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a 13½ ton (13.76-tonne) bell. This was pulled 200 ft (61.0 m) up to the Clock Tower’s belfry, a feat that took 18 hours. It is 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) tall and 9 feet (2.74 m) diameter. This new bell first chimed in July 1859. In September it too cracked under the hammer, a mere two months after it officially went into service. According to the foundry's manager, George Mears, Denison had used a hammer more than twice the maximum weight specified. For three years Big Ben was taken out of commission and the hours were struck on the lowest of the quarter bells until it was reinstalled. To make the repair, a square piece of metal was chipped out from the rim around the crack, and the bell given an eighth of a turn so the new hammer struck in a different place. Big Ben has chimed with a slightly different tone ever since and is still in use today complete with the crack. At the time of its casting, Big Ben was the largest bell in the British Isles until "Great Paul", a 16¾ ton (17 tonne) bell currently hung in St Paul's Cathedral, was cast in 1881.

6. Elizabeth Tower

The Elizabeth Tower (previously called the Clock Tower), named in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II in her Diamond Jubilee year, was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design for a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was largely destroyed by fire on the night of 16 October 1834. The new Parliament was built in a Neo-gothic style. Although Barry was the chief architect of the Palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the clock tower, which resembles earlier Pugin designs, including one for Scarisbrick Hall. The design for the Elizabeth Tower was Pugin's last design before his final descent into madness and death, and Pugin himself wrote, at the time of Barry's last visit to him to collect the drawings: "I never worked so hard in my life for Mr Barry for tomorrow I render all the designs for finishing his bell tower & it is beautiful." The tower is designed in Pugin's celebrated Gothic Revival style, and is 315 feet (96.0 m) high (roughly 16 storeys).

The bottom 200 feet (61.0 m) of Elizabeth Tower's structure consists of brickwork with sand coloured Anston limestone cladding. The remainder of the tower's height is a framed spire of cast iron. The tower is founded on a 50 feet (15.2 m) square raft, made of 10 feet (3.0 m) thick concrete, at a depth of 13 feet (4.0 m) below ground level. The four clock dials are 180 feet (54.9 m) above ground. The interior volume of the tower is 164,200 cubic feet (4,650 cubic metres).

Despite being one of the world's most famous tourist attractions, the interior of the tower is not open to overseas visitors, though United Kingdom residents are able to arrange tours (well in advance) through their Member of Parliament. However, the tower has no lift, so those escorted must climb the 334 limestone stairs to the top.

Due to changes in ground conditions since construction, the tower leans slightly to the north-west, by roughly 230 millimetres (9.1 in) over 55 m height, giving an inclination of approximately 1/240. This includes a planned maximum of 22 mm increased tilt due to tunnelling for the Jubilee Line extension) Due to thermal effects it oscillates annually by a few millimetres east and west.

Journalists during Queen Victoria's reign called it St Stephen's Tower. As MPs originally sat at St Stephen's Hall, these journalists referred to anything related to the House of Commons as news from "St Stephens".

On 2 June 2012, The Daily Telegraph reported that 331 Members of Parliament, including senior members of all three main parties, supported a proposal to change the name from Clock Tower to "Elizabeth Tower" in tribute to the Queen in her Diamond Jubilee year. This is thought to be appropriate because the large west tower now known as Victoria Tower was renamed in tribute to Queen Victoria on her Diamond Jubilee.On 26 June, the House of Commons confirmed that the name change could go ahead. Prime Minister Cameron announced the change of name on 12 September 2012, at the start of Prime minister's questions. The change was marked by a naming ceremony in which the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow unveiled a name plaque attached to the tower on Speaker's Green.

7. Movement

The clock's movement is famous for its reliability. The designers were the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, and George Airy, the Astronomer Royal. Construction was entrusted to clockmaker Edward John Dent; after his death in 1853 his stepson Frederick Dent completed the work, in 1854. As the Tower was not complete until 1859, Denison had time to experiment: Instead of using the deadbeat escapement and remontoire as originally designed, Denison invented the double three-legged gravity escapement. This escapement provides the best separation between pendulum and clock mechanism. The pendulum is installed within an enclosed windproof box sunk beneath the clockroom. It is 13 feet (4.0 m) long, weighs 660 pounds (300 kg) and beats every 2 seconds. The clockwork mechanism in a room below weighs 5 tons. On top of the pendulum is a small stack of old penny coins; these are to adjust the time of the clock. Adding a coin has the effect of minutely lifting the position of the pendulum's centre of mass, reducing the effective length of the pendulum rod and hence increasing the rate at which the pendulum swings. Adding or removing a penny will change the clock's speed by 0.4 seconds per day.

On 10 May 1941, a German bombing raid damaged two of the clock's dials and sections of the tower's stepped roof and destroyed the House of Commons chamber. Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed a new five-floor block. Two floors are occupied by the current chamber, which was used for the first time on 26 October 1950. Despite the heavy bombing the clock ran accurately and chimed throughout the Blitz.

Elizabeth Tower tilts as a result of the excavation of tunnels near Westminster. The tower has tilted an additional 0.9 mm each year since 2003, and the tilt can now be seen by the naked eye.

8. Malfunctions, breakdowns, and other outages

1916: for two years during World War I, the bells were silenced and the clock face darkened at night to prevent attack by German Zeppelins.

1 September 1939: although the bells continued to ring, the clock faces were darkened at night through World War II to prevent guiding Blitz pilots.

New Year's Eve 1962: The clock slowed due to heavy snow and ice on the long hands, causing the pendulum to detach from the clockwork, as it is designed to do in such circumstances, to avoid serious damage elsewhere in the mechanism – the pendulum continuing to swing freely. Thus it chimed in the new year 10 minutes late.

5 August 1976: First and only major breakdown. The air brake speed regulator of the chiming mechanism broke after more than 100 years of torsional fatigue, causing the fully wound 4-ton weight to spin the winding drum out of the movement, causing a large amount of damage. The Great Clock was shut down for a total of 26 days over nine months – it was reactivated on 9 May 1977; this was its longest break in operation since its construction. During this time BBC Radio 4 had to make do with the pips. Although there were minor stoppages from 1977 to 2002 when the maintenance of the clock was carried out by the old firm of clockmakers Thwaites & Reed, these were often repaired within the permitted two hour downtime and not recorded as stoppages. Prior to 1970 maintenance was carried out by the original firm of Dents and since 2002 by Parliamentary staff.

27 May 2005: the clock stopped at 10:07 pm local time, possibly because of hot weather; temperatures in London had reached an unseasonable 31.8 °C (90 °F). It resumed, but stopped again at 10:20 pm local time and remained still for about 90 minutes before resuming.

29 October 2005: the mechanism was stopped for about 33 hours so the clock and its chimes could be worked on. It was the lengthiest maintenance shutdown in 22 years.

7:00 am 5 June 2006: The clock tower's "Quarter Bells" were taken out of commission for four weeks as a bearing holding one of the quarter bells was damaged from years of wear and needed to be removed for repairs. During this period, BBC Radio 4 broadcast recordings of British bird song followed by the pips in place of the usual chimes.

11 August 2007: Start of 6-week stoppage for maintenance. Bearings in the clock's going train and the "great bell" striker were replaced, for the first time since installation. During the maintenance works, the clock was not driven by the original mechanism, but by an electric motor. Once again, BBC Radio 4 had to make do with the pips during this tim

9. Chimes

Along with the Great Bell, the belfry houses four quarter bells which play the Westminster Quarters on the quarter hours. The four quarter bells sound G♯, F♯, E, and B. They were cast by John Warner & Sons at their Crescent Foundry in 1857 (G♯, F♯ and B) and 1858 (E). The Foundry was in Jewin Crescent, in what is now known as The Barbican, in the City of London.

The Quarter Bells play a 20-chime sequence, 1–4 at quarter past, 5–12 at half past, 13–20 and 1–4 at quarter to, and 5–20 on the hour (which sounds 25 seconds before the main bell tolls the hour). Because the low bell (B) is struck twice in quick succession, there is not enough time to pull a hammer back, and it is supplied with two wrench hammers on opposite sides of the bell. The tune is that of the Cambridge Chimes, first used for the chimes of Great St Mary's church, Cambridge, and supposedly a variation, attributed to William Crotch, on a phrase from Handel's Messiah. The notional words of the chime, again derived from Great St Mary's and in turn an allusion to Psalm 37:23–24, are: "All through this hour/Lord be my guide/And by Thy power/No foot shall slide". They are written on a plaque on the wall of the clock room.

One of the requirements for the clock was that the first stroke of the hour bell should register the time, correct to within one second per day. So, at twelve o'clock, for example, it is the first of the twelve chimes that signifies the hour (the New Year on New Year's Eve at midnight).

10. The bells of Big Ben are to be silenced

In 17.03.2013 The bells of Big Ben and the Great Clock at Westminster are to be silenced as a mark of respect during Wednesday's ceremonial funeral for Lady Thatcher, the Commons Speaker has announced.

As unease about the scale of the funeral spread across political parties, John Bercow told MPs that silencing the bells was the most fitting tribute to the late prime minister following a number of representations. It is thought the bells were last silenced as a mark of respect during the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"The Great Bell – Big Ben". Living Heritage. London: UK Parliament. 13 November 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2012.

"The Story of Big Ben". Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

"Big Ben – How did Big Ben get its Name?". Icons of England. Icons.org.uk. Archived from the original on 24 January 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2010.

Wikipedia