BIG BEN

Big Ben is the name of the bell housed in the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament. Edward Becket Denison designed the clock built by E.J. Dent and installed in 1858. The first bell cracked and had to be recast. It was named 'Big Ben' after the first Commissioner of Works, Sir Benjamin Hall, although some maintain it was named after the popular boxer Benjamin Caunt, who was the publican of the Coach and Horses in St Martins Lane.

The clock in 320ft high St Stephen's Clock Tower has four 23ft square dials. The 11 minute hand is 14ft long, and the hour hand 9ft long, with 2ft high figures. The 13 tonnes bell was cast at George Hears of Whitechapel and pulled to Westminster by a wagon team of sixteen horses. On 31 May 1859 the clock and bell became operational. Until 1913, when automatic winding gear was installed, it took two men 32 hours to fully wind the clock that from the outset was extremely accurate. The addition or subtraction of very light weights, usually old pennies, could easily regulate the 13ft long pendulum, weighing 658 lbs. The chimes imitate those of St Mary's Church in Cambridge based on an aria in Handel's Messiah.

When the House of Commons was damaged by an air raid in 1941, the clock faces were shattered and the clock lost one and a half seconds a day. The clock stopped on three occasions during the war, the last time in January 1945 when the clock mechanism froze. In 1956 the mechanism was overhauled and three of the faces re-glazed. Twelve years later the tower was found to be leaning nine and a half inches to the northwest but has not moved since. St Stephen's Tower once contained a prison cell where 'rioters' were confined, one of the most prominent of these was the leader of the women's suffrage movement, Emmeline Pankhurst, who was placed in the cell in 1902 after demonstrating outside Parliament.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1057