BIG BEN

Big Ben is one of London's best-known landmarks, and looks most spectacular at night when the clock faces are illuminated. You even know when parliament is in session, because a light shines above the clock face.

The four dials of the clock are 23 feet square, the minute hand is 14 feet long and the figures are 2 feet high. Minutely regulated with a stack of coins placed on the huge pendulum, Big Ben is an excellent timekeeper, which has rarely stopped.

The name Big Ben actually refers not to the clock-tower itself , but to the thirteen ton bell hung within. The bell was named after the first commissioner of works, Sir Benjamin Hall. This bell came originally from the old Palace of Westminster, it was given to the Dean of St. Paul’s by William III. Before returning to Westminster to hang in it's present home, it was refashioned in Whitechapel in 1858. The BBC first broadcast the chimes on the 31st December 1923 - there is a microphone in the turret connected to Broadcasting House.

During the second world war in 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the Commons chamber of the Houses of Parliament, but the clock tower remained intact and Big Ben continued to keep time and strike away the hours, its unique sound was broadcast to the nation and around the world, a welcome reassurance of hope to all who heard it.

There are even cells within the clock tower where Members of Parliament can be imprisoned for a breach of parliamentary privilege, though this is rare; the last recorded case was in 1880.

The tower is not open to the general public, but those with a "special interest" may arrange a visit to the top of the Clock Tower through their local (UK) MP.

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 a decade earlier....

In 1844, Parliament decided that the new buildings for the Houses of Parliament, then under construction, should incorporate a tower and clock. The commission for this work was awarded to the architect Charles Barry, whilst the specification for the clock was drawn up by the Astronomer Royal, George Airy. 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 clock-makers of the day considered such accuracy unattainable for a large tower clock driving striking mechanisms and heavy hands exposed to wind and weather. Indeed, it wasn't until 1851 that a designer was found who could fulfil this exacting specification. This was Edmund Beckett Denison, later Sir Edmund Becket, the first Baron Grimthorpe. The clock he designed was built by Messrs E.J. Dent & Co., and completed in 1854. (The original clock he built for the competition to find a clockmaker up to the task is 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 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, but this cracked irreparably while under test in the Palace Yard at Westminster. It was then that Denison 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.

A mere two months after it 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.

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.

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