> BIG BEN

Overview

Big Ben is the nickname of the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, housed at the top of the Elizabeth Tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London. Although tourists and broadcasters often use "Big Ben" to refer to the entire clock tower, strictly speaking the name belongs only to the bell inside. The tower, the clock, and the bell together form one of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom and an enduring symbol of London.

Construction

The Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, and the decision to rebuild it included plans for a new clock tower. Architects Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin designed the tower in the Gothic Revival style to complement the rebuilt parliament. The clock itself was designed by the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison and the clockmaker Edward John Dent, with precision standards far ahead of their time: the Astronomer Royal specified that the first stroke of each hour must be accurate to within one second, a standard then considered impossible for a tower clock of that size. The Great Bell was cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1858 after an earlier bell cracked during testing, and the clock began keeping time on May 31, 1859.

The Clock and the Bell

The Great Clock has four faces, each 7 meters in diameter, with minute hands more than 4 meters long. A small mechanism used to adjust the clock's speed by stacking or removing pre-decimal British pennies on its massive pendulum — a technique that survives to this day. The Great Bell weighs about 13.7 tons and strikes the hour on the note E. Four smaller quarter bells play the familiar Westminster Chimes every fifteen minutes, a melody adapted in 1793 for a clock at Great St Mary's Church in Cambridge. The name "Big Ben" is most likely a tribute to Sir Benjamin Hall, the Commissioner of Works when the bell was hung.

Legacy and Renovation

The chimes of Big Ben were broadcast live on BBC Radio beginning in 1923, and they have marked New Year's Eve, royal events, and moments of national mourning ever since. The tower was renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee; for most of its existence it had simply been called the Clock Tower. From 2017 to 2022, the tower underwent a major renovation that replaced the clock mechanism, restored the decorative stonework and Prussian-blue paint, and upgraded worker safety. During the work the bells were mostly silent, but they have since been fully restored to operation.

Did You Know?

• "Big Ben" is the nickname for the bell, not the tower.
• Old British pennies are still placed on the pendulum to fine-tune its speed.
• The tower was renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012 in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
• The original Great Bell cracked during testing before a new one was cast.