Big Ben refurbishment project echoes Britain's spirit and history

LONDON -- Big Ben, London's iconic clock tower, has kept time for residents of the city for some 160 years. The great hour bell housed in the lofty tower at the northern end of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster is a symbol not just of Parliament but of the British capital and indeed the country.

The first major refurbishment of the clock tower since it was built is now complete. Londoners say the sound of the fully and beautifully restored bell is crisper than before. Some people liken the sound of Big Ben to Britain's heartbeat.

The metaphor echoes the history of the clock tower, which withstood two world wars. The tower was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark the Dimond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, who devoted her life to serving the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Westminster Bridge over the River Thames offers superb spots from which to capture the tower in photos.

The choice of Prussian blue over the previous black has revived the clock face after the refurbishment.

If you point your smartphone camera at the Great Clock from the midsection of the bridge, you may be surprised to find that its face looks significantly different from the familiar image seen in guidebooks. The refurbished face features Prussian blue hands and numbers in place of the previous black. The black paint on the stonework around the clock dials has been removed and certain features have been gilded. The restored original color scheme gives the London landmark a sharper, more elegant look.

Londoners first heard the famous bell toll in 1859. In 2017, Parliament embarked on a full restoration of the clock, which was described as an architectural and technological challenge of unprecedented scale. The project was primarily aimed at repairing the damage done by German bombs during World War II. After the war, the clock received first-aid, but a full restoration was postponed due to a fiscal crunch.

"One of the main problems we had was war damage. ... Because of wartime austerity, repairs were done very quickly. More work was done in 1950-55, but not very well. And so, we had a lot of water leaking through. So we had huge rust problems." said Adam Watrobski, principal architect and head of architecture and heritage at the Houses of Parliament.

A full refurbishment was critical to show that Parliament was functioning properly, he added. "It's not just about the clock, not just about order. ... The idea is that Parliament is in control, and clocks are about control," Watrobski said.

The Elizabeth Tower project was originally scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2021. But the COVID-19 pandemic set the plans back. The main face-lift was carried out in three separate areas. One was the exterior of the tower, including the stone roof and walls. The stonework in about 800 locations, covering 9% of the tower's total surface area, was repaired. Another area that got attention was the tower's interiors. A new emergency elevator, an exhibition room and restrooms have been installed. Parliament is considering allowing tours of the clock tower for overseas visitors, starting next spring.

From the top of the Great Clock to the roof, the building is adorned with elaborate designs.

A third area of focus of the restoration was the Great Clock, which has four faces. The task of repairing the clock was awarded to the Cumbria Clock Co., which is located in the village of Dacre in the Lake District National Park. The company specializes in repairing church and turret clocks. The repair and restoration work on the clock's mechanism was done strictly in accordance with the original design.

The company painstakingly cleaned, repaired and restored more than 1,000 components -- including wheels, pinions, bell-hammers and bearings -- at its workshop. Only a small number of newly fabricated components were installed. This accords with the British inclination to use old things for as long as possible by keeping them in good repair.

The clock's regulator was designed by Edmund Beckett Denison, 1st Baron Grimthorpe, an English lawyer and horologist. The clock was actually fashioned by clockmakers Edward John Dent and his son, Frederick Rippon Dent. Cumbria Clock Co.'s director and co-founder, Keith Scobie-Youngs, describes the clock's accuracy as akin to a smartphone for the Victorian age.

Pennies are stacked on the pendulum of the clock, acting as weights and helping to keep Big Ben running on time.

Parliament's clock mechanics have worked hard to maintain the accuracy of the mechanism. One way they keep the clock running properly is to stack old coins, predecimal pennies to be exact, on the clock's pendulum. These act as weights, helping regulate it. Adding or removing coins affects the pendulum's center of mass and thus the rate at which it swings. Adding one penny causes the clock to gain two-fifths of a second in 24 hours, according to the clock's keepers.

A team of mechanics led by Ian Westworth, clockmaker to the Houses of Parliament, keeps an eye on the accuracy of the clock by linking the pendulum system with a precision clock connected to a computer. This bit of digital era technology is used to control the huge mechanical clock. When asked about his painstaking effort to ensure the clock keeps precise time, Westworth said: "The secret is just tender loving care, really." If there's anything going wrong, we can actually see it very early and we can correct it. ... And anything that [is] wearing out, we can correct those faults [quickly]."

Before the clock was built, a competition was held to choose a design. To ensure the clock's punctuality, Parliament set 15 conditions. The first stroke of each hour, for example, had to be accurate within one second, and the clock's performance had to be telegraphed twice a day to the Greenwich Observatory for verification.

Cumbria Clock Co. Chief Executive Keith Scobie-Youngs, right, and his son: Scobie-Youngs has been in the business of repairing clocks for over 40 years.

Cumbria's Scobie-Youngs, who has been in the business of repairing clocks for 41 years, said the Elizabeth Tower project attests to the innovativeness of the original design by Denison and Dent. He said he was thrilled with their elaborate design work.

Hargreaves Foundry, a foundry based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, also helped with the restoration by casting iron to replace the original Victorian iron castings from the Elizabeth Tower, from window frames to gutters and roof tiles.

The company faced a colossal challenge. "We didn't get drawings or anything. We just got a casting. It's like, 'Can you make another one of them?' The most difficult part is -- a lot of cases -- is determining what casting we're trying to make," said Andrew Knight, business manager at Hargreaves Foundry. Since the company was already involved in repairing the roof of the Houses of Parliament before the refurbishment work on the clock tower began, it took Hargreaves Foundry seven years to complete the work. "The building is stable. There probably isn't any weakness in the structure as we run the engineers on it," Knight said.

The restored clock will keep time accurately for at least three centuries, a feat no electronic clock can accomplish.

The Elizabeth Tower is often mistakenly called "Big Ben." Strictly speaking, Big Ben actually refers to the main bell housed within the tower.

Strictly speaking, Big Ben refers to the main bell housed within the Elizabeth Tower, rather than the entire structure.

Along with the Great Bell, the belfry houses four quarter bells.

The Great Bell, which is suspended about a third of the way down from the top of the 96-meter tower, is the second bell. It is 2.2 meters tall, 2.7 meters in diameter and weighs 13.7 tons. Along with the Great Bell, the belfry houses four quarter bells. The bells mark the time for people in central London who are within 8 kilometers of the clock. Big Ben bonged at midnight on New Year's Eve in 2021 for the first time after the repairs were completed.

The clock tower was raised in the mid-19th century as a part of a new Palace of Westminster after the old palace was destroyed by fire on the night of Oct. 16, 1834. The blaze was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks, which were disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords. A royal commission appointed to study the rebuilding of the palace announced in June 1835 that the style of the buildings should either be Gothic or Elizabethan. A public competition to design a new palace was organized and the entry submitted by Charles Barry, who had proposed a Gothic-style palace, was selected. Barry included a magnificent clock tower in his final designs.

One important fact concerning this process is that British democracy works on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which means the legislative body, not the people, has absolute sovereignty. The proposal to build a colossal structure that appears to loom over the world as part of a building that symbolizes parliamentary supremacy mirrors the fact that the British Empire was at the pinnacle of its power and glory at that time.

Big Ben was an important presence in the background of Queen Elizabeth II's funeral on Sept. 19. On the night before the funeral, the clock tower was illuminated in orange. As the gun carriage carrying the queen's coffin, towed by Royal Navy sailors, made its way through central London, the clock tolled once every minute for 96 minutes, marking the 96 years of the queen's life.

The cost of the repairs and restoration of Big Ben ballooned, due partly to the COVID-19 pandemic. British taxpayers will have to pick up the tab, estimated at 97 million pounds ($107 million), more than three times the original estimate.

While some taxpayers grumble at the cost, most Londoners welcome the refurbishment of the "heartbeat of the nation." Restoring Big Ben to good health is seen as a metaphor for the country's sound future.