50 Fun Facts About Big Ben

Strictly speaking, 'Big Ben' is the nickname of what?

By extension the name is now used for the clock and the whole tower, though purists object.

What new name did the structure receive in 2012 to mark the Diamond Jubilee?

The precedent was the palace's west tower, renamed Victoria Tower for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Big Ben stands at the north end of which building?

The tower was part of Charles Barry's design for a new palace after the old one burned in 1834.

Which architect designed the tower, his last work before illness and death in 1852?

He wrote that he had 'never worked so hard in my life' finishing the bell tower drawings for Barry.

In which year was the tower completed?

Construction had begun on 28 September 1843, with the contractors Thomas Grissell and Morton Peto.

How tall is the tower?

That makes it only the third-tallest clock tower in Britain.

How many steps is the climb from ground level to the belfry?

That is 290 stone steps to the clock room plus 44 to the belfry; another 59 reach the top of the spire.

What event prompted the building of a new home for Parliament, and with it the clock tower?

Charles Barry was chief architect of the neo-gothic replacement but handed the tower to Pugin.

The tower's exterior is clad in sand-coloured Anston limestone quarried in which county?

Underneath the stone the tower is built of brick, topped by a spire of hundreds of cast-iron roof tiles.

Which fruit, the emblem of Catherine of Aragon, appears among the shields decorating the tower?

The 52 shields also carry the Tudor rose, thistle, shamrock, leek, portcullis and fleur-de-lis.

The tower leans slightly in which direction because it stands on gravel over London Clay?

The lean is about 230 mm over 55 m; experts say it won't be a problem for another 4,000 to 10,000 years.

Building Westminster station for which Underground line required tons of concrete under the tower in the 1990s?

The tunnelling was allowed to add a planned maximum of 22 mm to the tower's tilt.

The Ayrton Light above the belfry is lit whenever what happens?

It originally shone toward Buckingham Palace so Queen Victoria could see when the Commons was at work.

Who was the last person imprisoned in the tower's oak-panelled Prison Room, in 1880?

The atheist MP for Northampton refused to swear a religious oath; the room now houses the Petitions Committee.

Victorian journalists commonly called the tower by what mistaken name?

MPs originally sat in St Stephen's Hall, so anything Commons-related was 'news from St Stephens'.

Which prime minister announced the tower's renaming in September 2012?

Speaker John Bercow unveiled a plaque on Speaker's Green to mark the change.

What is the diameter of each clock dial?

Each dial contains 324 pieces of opalescent glass, said to be no two alike.

How many pieces of opalescent glass does each clock dial contain?

The Victorian glass was replaced during the 2017-2021 works with reproductions made in Germany.

Whose name is invoked in the Latin inscription at the base of each dial?

DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM means 'O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First'.

Unusually for a clock, how does the Great Clock show the number four on its dials?

Most Roman-numeral clock faces use IIII for balance with the VIII opposite.

What was the original colour of the dials and hands, restored during the 2017-2021 conservation?

They were painted black in the 1930s to hide the effects of air pollution; six colour schemes were found in the paint layers.

How long is the copper minute hand on each dial?

The gun-metal hour hands are 8.75 feet long.

Which Astronomer Royal co-designed the clock movement with Edmund Beckett Denison?

Denison never patented his gravity escapement, which became standard on high-quality tower clocks.

What did Denison invent for the clock instead of the planned deadbeat mechanism?

It isolates the pendulum from wind, rain and snow pushing on the hands.

What is placed on top of the pendulum to fine-tune the clock's timekeeping?

Adding or removing one penny changes the clock's speed by 0.4 seconds a day.

By how much does adding or removing one penny change the clock's speed?

In 2009 three pennies were swapped for a £5 coin celebrating the 2012 Olympics.

How often is the clock hand-wound?

Each winding takes about an hour and a half; the horologists also look after some 300 other palace clocks.

During the First World War the bells were silenced and the dials darkened at night to avoid guiding what?

The bells returned at 11:00 am on 11 November 1918 to mark the Armistice.

What slowed the clock by four and a half minutes on 12 August 1949?

Snow on the hands has stopped the clock many more times, prompting little heaters behind two dials.

How late did Big Ben chime in the 1963 New Year after ice detached the pendulum on New Year's Eve 1962?

The pendulum is designed to detach under such loads to prevent damage elsewhere in the mechanism.

The longest break in the clock's operation, 26 days over nine months, followed a breakdown in which year?

The chiming mechanism's air brake failed and a fully wound four-ton weight tore the winding drum out of the movement.

Which environmental group's activists scaled the tower and blocked a clock face in both 1984 and 2004?

The 1984 climb blocked the face for 11 hours; the 2004 one for seven.

Which musical note does the Great Bell sound?

The four quarter bells sound G sharp, F sharp, E and B.

Where was the original 16-ton hour bell cast in 1856?

Made by John Warner & Sons, it cracked beyond repair during testing in New Palace Yard.

Which East London works recast the Great Bell in 1858 after the original cracked?

The 13.5-ton replacement was hauled to the tower on a trolley pulled by sixteen horses.

How many horses drew the trolley that carried the recast bell from the foundry to the tower?

Hoisting the bell 200 feet up to the belfry then took 18 hours.

Why did the second Great Bell crack in September 1859, only weeks after it first chimed?

The fix was to chip out a square of metal, turn the bell an eighth of a turn, and use a lighter hammer; the crack is still there.

Big Ben lost its title as the largest bell in the British Isles in 1881 to which bell?

Great Paul weighs 16.75 tons to Big Ben's 13.5.

Besides Sir Benjamin Hall, which heavyweight boxer is a candidate for the origin of 'Big Ben'?

Late-1850s newspapers, however, suggested the name referred to Hall, who oversaw the bell's installation.

The Westminster Quarters chime tune is supposedly based on violin phrases from an air in which oratorio?

It was first used at Great St Mary's church in Cambridge, hence its other name, the Cambridge Chimes.

How many quarter bells hang alongside the Great Bell in the belfry?

They play a 20-note sequence in E major that builds through the quarters to the full tune on the hour.

How many times did the bell toll at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022?

One stroke for each year of the monarch's life, as at the funerals of Edward VII, George V and George VI.

On 27 July 2012 Big Ben chimed 30 times starting at 8:12 am to welcome what?

The 2012 Games were the 30th Olympiad, hence 30 strokes.

For roughly how long did the chimes fall silent for the restoration that began on 21 August 2017?

The bells were silenced to protect workers' hearing, a decision criticised by Theresa May and senior MPs.

The 2017-2021 restoration was estimated at about £29m but ended up costing roughly how much?

Unexpected 1941 bomb damage, asbestos, lead paint and broken glass drove the overrun.

On which BBC network has Big Ben been heard live before news bulletins since 31 December 1923?

Londoners at the right distance can hear thirteen strokes: the radio chime arrives before the sound through the air.

Which clockmaker was entrusted with building the Great Clock, a job his stepson finished in 1854?

Because the tower was not ready until 1859, the finished movement sat waiting for five years while its designer kept tinkering with the escapement.

In which year did UNESCO designate the tower and palace a World Heritage Site?

The tower had already been protected as part of a Grade I listed building since 1970.

What was installed in the tower's old ventilation shaft during the 2017-2021 conservation works?

The shaft was designed by David Boswell Reid, the 'grandfather of air-conditioning', to draw cool air into the palace, but it never worked and ended up serving as a chimney until about 1914.

A Luftwaffe raid in May 1941 damaged two dials and destroyed which part of the palace?

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed the replacement block, first used in October 1950, while the clock kept accurate time and chimed throughout the Blitz.