47 Fun Facts About Big Ben

In wartime Britain, the BBC broadcast Big Ben striking nine each night as the signal for what?

A minute of silent prayer, later known as the Big Ben Minute, was kept across Britain as the clock struck nine each evening, even while the bombs were falling.

What new name did Big Ben's tower receive in 2012 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee?

Elizabeth Tower replaced a very plain official name, the Clock Tower; Big Ben has only ever been a nickname.

Big Ben stands at the north end of which building?

The Palace of Westminster is the home of Parliament, and it is called a palace because kings lived on the site from the 11th century, when Edward the Confessor built there.

Which architect designed Big Ben's tower, his last work before illness and death in 1852?

Augustus Pugin wrote that he had never worked so hard in his life as on these drawings, made for the chief architect Charles Barry; he died aged 40 and never saw the tower built.

Big Ben's tower stands almost exactly as tall as which landmark?

The Statue of Liberty reaches 93 m only with her pedestal, just short of the 96 m clock tower; the figure herself, at 46 m, is less than half its height.

Big Ben's bells were silenced as a mark of respect during whose state funeral in January 1965?

Winston Churchill's funeral on 30 January 1965 passed in silence from the clock tower; when a monarch dies the custom runs the other way, and the great bell is tolled slowly.

Why did Parliament need the new building that gave us Big Ben?

A fire in 1834 destroyed the old one almost completely, sparing little but the medieval Westminster Hall; Charles Barry won the competition to design its replacement.

Beneath its skin of sand-coloured limestone, Big Ben's tower is mostly built of what?

Brick makes up most of the tower, and the limestone is only a facing; the whole thing was built from the inside out, with no scaffolding around it.

Which fruit, the emblem of Catherine of Aragon, appears among the gilded shields on Big Ben's tower?

Pomegranate shields honour Henry VIII's first wife and sit beside the rose, thistle, shamrock and leek; a fleur-de-lis is there too, because English monarchs once claimed the throne of France.

Within days of Big Ben first striking in 1859, an MP rose in the Commons to complain about what?

Its dreadful noise, he said, sounded like funeral notes fit for a royal death, and he asked for the bell's tone to be altered; Londoners grew used to the bong and came to cherish it.

Engineers began monitoring Big Ben's tower for movement when which Underground line was extended beneath Parliament in the 1990s?

The Jubilee line extension passes under Parliament, and a report commissioned because of it found that the tower leans slightly; its keepers expect no trouble from the tilt for thousands of years.

The Ayrton Light above Big Ben's belfry is lit whenever what happens?

The House of Commons sits after dark, or the Lords does, and the lantern is lit; it is said to have been added so the queen of the day could see from Buckingham Palace that Parliament was at work.

Big Ben's tower was built with rooms on its lower floors for which unusual purpose?

Locking up unruly MPs was the plan: the prison room held members who broke the rules of the Commons, and in 1880 the House voted to confine the atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh there in a row over his oath.

Victorian journalists commonly called Big Ben's tower by what mistaken name?

St Stephen's was Victorian press shorthand for the Commons, which had long met in St Stephen's Chapel, so reporters hung the name on the clock tower too; the real St Stephen's Tower is a smaller one over the public entrance.

Which prime minister welcomed the renaming of Big Ben's tower in September 2012?

David Cameron called it a fitting tribute to the Queen's 60 years of service, and he gave the credit to a fellow Conservative MP, Tobias Ellwood, who had led the campaign for it.

Big Ben's clock dials are opal glass, which lets them be what after dark?

Lit from behind, each 7 m dial glows through hundreds of pieces of opal glass; from 1939 to 1945 the lamps stayed off, and the faces went dark for the whole war.

Glashütte Lamberts, which hand-blew the panes for Big Ben's restored dials, is in which country?

Germany's Lamberts works in Bavaria still blows flat glass by mouth, so it could faithfully reproduce the dials' old panes, nearly 1,300 of them, each one made by hand.

Unusually for a clock with Roman numerals, how do Big Ben's dials show the number four?

IV rather than IIII breaks an old habit: the Romans themselves often wrote four as IIII, and clockmakers held on to that older form long after IV became the standard.

Which original colour returned to Big Ben's dials and clock hands in the 2017-2021 conservation?

Prussian blue was the first coat: conservators stripped back the layers of black paint, and the blue they found underneath matched an early watercolour of the architect's design.

Big Ben's hour hands are heavy gun metal, but its much longer minute hands are made from sheets of which metal?

Copper sheet keeps each 14-foot minute hand light enough to sweep the dial; the first minute hands made for the clock were reportedly so heavy that they had to be replaced.

The man who designed Big Ben's famously accurate clock was only an amateur clockmaker, so what was his actual profession?

Lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison drew up the design that was finally judged good enough; as he was no craftsman, a professional clockmaker was hired to build it.

What became of the mechanism invented to stop wind on Big Ben's hands upsetting its timekeeping?

Tower clocks everywhere copied it: the device shields the pendulum from gusts pushing on the hands, and it became the standard for new tower clocks in Britain and then around the world.

What do Big Ben's clockmakers stack on top of the pendulum to fine-tune the clock's timekeeping?

Pre-decimal penny coins do the job: adding one speeds the clock up by two-fifths of a second a day, and the old pennies are still used though they left circulation in 1971.

On 1 April 1980 the BBC World Service announced, as a joke, that Big Ben's clock would do what?

Go digital was the joke: the BBC's overseas service said the clock would get a digital readout, and it promised the hands to the first listeners to get in touch.

What must Big Ben's clockmakers do three times a week?

Wind it up is the job: the clock is driven by heavy weights that sink down a shaft inside the tower, and three times a week they have to be wound back to the top.

During the First World War, Big Ben's bells were silenced and its dials darkened at night to avoid guiding what?

German Zeppelins were raiding by night, so the bells stopped and the dials stayed dark for two years; in the next war the dials went dark again, but the bells rang on through the Blitz.

What slowed Big Ben's clock one day in August 1949?

A flock of starlings on the minute hand was enough: the birds' combined weight held the hand back, and the clock ran more than four minutes slow.

How late did Big Ben ring in the New Year of 1963, after a freezing New Year's Eve?

Nine minutes late: heavy snow had packed against a dial and ice coated the hands, slowing the clock on the one night when the whole country listens for it.

What caused the worst breakdown in the history of Big Ben's clock, in August 1976?

Metal fatigue was to blame: after more than a century a part gave way and a huge winding weight ran out of control, doing so much damage that the clock was in and out of action for nine months.

Two climbers from which environmental group scaled Big Ben's tower in March 2004, exposing a worrying gap in Parliament's security?

Greenpeace sent two climbers up the tower at dawn, and their message was about the Iraq war, not the environment; the breach was called immensely worrying, and the police reviewed security at Parliament.

While silenced for repairs from 2017, Big Ben still struck on New Year's Eve and on which other annual occasion?

Remembrance Sunday and New Year's Eve were the exceptions made during the long silence, and an electric motor kept the hands turning so that the clock still told the time.

What happened to the first bell cast to be Big Ben, before it ever reached the belfry?

It cracked in testing: the huge bell was struck day after day in the yard at the foot of the tower until it split in 1857, so it was broken up and recast as the lighter bell that hangs there today.

Big Ben was cast in 1858 at a famous bell foundry in which East London district?

Whitechapel's bell foundry had also cast the first Liberty Bell a century earlier; that bell cracked on its first test ring and was recast in Philadelphia, and Big Ben went on to crack as well.

What hauled the great bell Big Ben through London to Westminster?

Sixteen horses pulled the bell to the foot of the tower in triumph; then came the hard part, because winching it up to the belfry took many hours.

What is usually blamed for cracking Big Ben in 1859, weeks after it first struck?

Denison used an over-heavy hammer, the bell's founder complained; the cure was a lighter one and a turn of the bell so that a fresh spot took the blows, and the crack is still there today.

Which 1881 bell took Big Ben's title as the largest in the British Isles?

Great Paul at St Paul's Cathedral, cast in 1881, outweighs Big Ben by some three tons, yet it is seldom heard: repeated breakdowns have kept the bigger bell quiet for years at a time.

One theory says Big Ben was named after Ben Caunt, a Victorian champion in which sport?

Boxing made Ben Caunt a heavyweight champion, and some trace the nickname to him; the rival candidate is Sir Benjamin Hall, the official in charge of the works, and the argument has never been settled.

Big Ben's quarter-hour chime is said to be built on a phrase from which oratorio?

Handel's Messiah is where tradition finds the tune, though nobody has proved it; it was written for the clock of a Cambridge church, Great St Mary's, and Westminster simply borrowed it.

What plays the tune before Big Ben strikes the hour?

Four smaller bells beside it play the quarters; when Big Ben cracked within months of its 1859 debut, the largest of them struck the hours in its place until the great bell was repaired.

On the morning of 27 July 2012, Big Ben struck over and over for three minutes to welcome what?

The London Olympic Games opened that evening, and Big Ben joined an artwork by Martin Creed, who asked the whole country to ring any bell it owned, as fast and as loud as possible, for three minutes.

Why was Big Ben silenced during the repairs that began in 2017?

To protect workers' hearing, Parliament said, since months spent right beside so loud a bell would do lasting harm; MPs and the prime minister of the day protested, but the silence held, apart from a few special occasions.

The discovery of what hidden hazard in Big Ben's tower helped send its repair bill soaring to about £80m?

Asbestos turned up in unexpected places once the scaffolding let surveyors see the whole tower, along with wartime bomb damage worse than anyone had known; a job first priced at £29m ended at nearly £80m.

Big Ben's chimes ring out live before the six o'clock and midnight news on which BBC radio station?

Radio 4 plays the chimes live before its 6pm and midnight news, a custom that began on New Year's Eve 1923, when the BBC first broadcast the bell to ring in 1924; recordings stood in while the tower was under repair.

The job of building Big Ben's clock went to Edward Dent, a maker famed for what?

Ships' chronometers had made Edward John Dent's name as a maker of precise timekeepers; he died in 1853 with the great clock unfinished, and Frederick Dent completed it the following year.

Big Ben shares a UNESCO World Heritage listing with which great London church?

Westminster Abbey, where monarchs are crowned, married and buried, stands beside Parliament, and UNESCO listed the two together in 1987 for their intertwined history of church, crown and state.

During the 2017-2021 conservation works, what was fitted inside an old ventilation shaft in Big Ben's tower?

A lift now rises through a shaft first built to draw fresh air into the palace; it was added so that an injured person can be brought down quickly instead of being carried down the long spiral stair.

A May 1941 air raid damaged a Big Ben dial and destroyed which part of Parliament?

The Commons chamber was destroyed on the night of 10 May 1941; a blast also broke the glass of Big Ben's south dial, yet the clock kept time through the raid and the chimes went out on the radio as usual.