London: Getting close to Big Ben requires earplugs and ear protectors to stay safe. When the 13.7 ton bell rings, the vibration hits your chest. After a five-year restoration project, the world famous Ringer is back with a bang.
The Great Clock atop Britain’s Parliament House is resuming daily operations after painstakingly refurbishing more than 1,000 movable parts.
When the five cast-iron bells of the clock, including Big Ben’s, went silent in 2017, a mournful crowd of lawmakers and staff gathered below. Some shed tears.
But after a week of testing, normal service will resume every 15 minutes from 11:00 a.m. (1100 GMT) on Sunday.
The time marks the moment November 11, 1918, when the guns went silent in World War I. In Britain, Remembrance Sunday immediately follows Armistice Day every 11 November.
These are the two occasions Big Ben and his allies have performed since 2017, with New Year’s Eve, when Britain left the European Union in 2021, and Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in September.
Atop the 96-metre (315-foot) Elizabeth Tower is a belfry with bells — protected by an external net to keep bats and pigeons out.
Beyond are some of the most spectacular views of London.
But the three in-house timekeepers of Parliament do not have time to enjoy the view.
Ian Westworth, 60, and his colleagues are busy overseeing the tests to make sure everything is in place after the $90 million restoration.
London Calling
“It’s the sound of London again,” Westworth told AFP on a tour of the tower’s dawn.
“The bell rings during wars, and you try and imagine what this bell really saw – 160 years of evolution.”
The Elizabeth Tower, formerly called the Clock Tower, was renamed in 2012 in honor of the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
When first built in the 1840s, it dominated the Westminster skyline. Today, newer and taller buildings are nearby.
“You could hear it (Big Ben) 15 miles (24 kilometers) away on a quiet night,” said Westworth, as a chill breeze through the belfry.
“Now you’re lucky that on a day like today you can hear it on the other side of Parliament Square.”
The five-year restoration included cleaning and repainting each of the five bell hammers and weapons. The bells stopped automatically.
Big Ben bell rings, and it’s so big that the floor in the tower below would have to be broken if it ever had to be removed.
Four small bells around it ring for a quarter of an hour.
The greatest task was to disassemble the 11.5-ton clock mechanism from 1859 so that each tooth and pinion could be cleaned, repaired and re-oiled by a specialist company in Cumbria, north-west England.
Other changes were cosmetic.
Twenty-eight round LED lights now illuminate the four faces of the clock, the balance of green and white offering the closest match to how they looked in gas-lit Victorian times.
Above the bells is a tall LED light, which glows white when Parliament is sitting.
State-of-the-art sprinklers have been installed throughout the tower, although the belfry is out of reach of the system.
timeless technology
In previous years prior to the renovation, Parliament’s timekeepers would benchmark the time of the Great Clock against the telephone-speaking clock.
Now, it is calibrated by GPS through the UK’s National Physical Laboratory.
But the method of adjusting a clock’s timing mechanism is old-fashioned: Pre-decimal pennies are added or removed from a weight attached to two giant coiled springs, to make or lose a second.
As the hour draws to an end, it’s time to don the ear guards again for an ongoing series of tests.
Big Ben plays it seven times, setting a bass vibrato in the gantry around it.
While deafening, the unmistakable sound of a cracked bell is also a reassuring note of stability in Britain after a year of political turmoil, and as the rest of the Parliamentary Estates grounds.
Political discord over costs is preventing a major renovation of the old complex.
But Westworth and his 35-year-old colleague Alex Jeffrey remain focused on the task at hand: looking after the Parliament’s 2,000 clocks, many of them irreplaceable antiques.
“Every day you’re taking time out in a very practical way using technology, arts and crafts,” Jeffrey said.
“It’s very tactile, as is maintaining the Great Clock,” he said. “It’s the best job in the world.”
