BIG BEN'S HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1940, Page 19

BIG BEN'S HISTORY

NICKNAMED BY "THE TIMES"

CHIMES AROUND THE WORLD

The sound of Big Ben's chiming goes round the world daily, in 8.8.C. broadcasts, yet how many people know thai the canonical name of Big Ben is "St. Stephen"? A writer in an overseas journal explains that it was "The Times" which nicknamed the old fellow "Big Ben" to commemorate the name of the Chief Commissioner of Works at the date of the casting of the bell, Sir Benjamin Hall, and the tag caught on. The pendulum of the clock weighs 6801b, and is fifteen feet in length, yet its action is so delicate that the additional weight of an ounce would alter by a second a week, the accuracy of the clock. Each of its four dials is twenty-two and a half feet in diameter and weighs four tons. The intervals between the minute marks are fourteen inches. Theminute hand which is sixteen feet long; makes, a leap of seven inches every half-minute, while it and the hour hand, which is nine feet long, weigh around 2cwt. The weights, wound up once a week, hang down a shaft 160 feet in depth. CRACKED BELL AN EMPROVE"MENT. Big Ben I, designed by Mr. E. B. Denisoni afterwards Lord Grimthorpe, was cast at Stockton-on-Tees in August, 1856, but after transportation to London, and a test at the foot of the clock tower, it was found, owing to a flaw in the metal, that the bell must be broken in time by the blows of the hammer., Then Mr. Denison designed Big Ben 11. It weighted between thirteen and fourteen tons, or roughly a ton less than' the other. It was cast on April 10, 1858, passed as to tone by Dr. Turle on June 18, and raised to its place in October. Then it cracked, and the crack, which was .widened by. filing to prevent vibration, appeared to Earl Grey and others to.improve the, tone of the bell, which formerly had been so doleful as to strike a note of terror in the soul of the hearer. These two bells cost the country £4000, Great Peter at York Minster weighs ten tons; Great Tom at Oxford seven tons; Great Tom at Lincoln five tons; and the bell at St. Paul's five tons. These are mere children compared with the Tsar Kolokol at Moscow that weighed 440,0001b and had a circumference of sixty feet. LEGENDARY BELLS. Someone has said that the more polite the nation, the smaller the bells.The bells of Italy and England, as an example, are small compared with those of Russia, China, Germany, or even Flanders. Henry VIII regarded bell-metal as something worth melting down or selling, and he got rid of a number of notable bells. When ships carrying these were wrecked, people saw in the .fact something that was providential.v '•■;.. ' . Sir Giles^Partridge, by play of dice, won from Henry VIII the Jesus Bells of St. Paul's, London. He was afterwards hanged on Tower Hill. They still teU visitors to Boscastle that a peal of bells, cast in a Continental factory for Boscastle Church, and lost in a ship that went down •within sight.of the church tower, "peal their deep tones beneath the tide'" when a storm is coming up.