"BIG BEN"

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 21

"BIG BEN"

AN EMPIRE FAVOURITE High iip in the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament hangs the most popular of all broadcasting stars —one whose voice is heard daily and nightly all over the world, writes Lieutenantcommander R. T. Gould, in the London ‘ Radio Times.’ He is ‘ Big Ben,’ the hour-bell of the great Westminster clock. Big Ben takes his name from a forgotten politician—Sir Benjamin Hall, afterwards Lord Llanover—who was First Commissioner of Works at the time (1856) when the Board of Works signed a contract with Messrs Warner, a London firm pf hell-founders, for the casting of a 14-ton hour bell and four quarter-bells. These were designed to be hung in ihe Clock Tower on its completion ; it was then carried no higher than the centres of the four great 22ft dials. At that date no English bell-founder had ever cast a bell weighing so much ns nine tons. In that respect we were a long way behind several less progressive nations. Russia, as early as 1653, had produced the “ Tsar _ Kolokol ” (Emperor of Bells) weighing nearly. 200 tons, and also another of 128 tons, which, unlike its larger and more famous brother (who cracked soon after casting and was never hung) is—unless it has been melted down since 'the Russian revolution—the largest bell in use. Upper Burma could boast of an 80-tou bell, and there was one of 53 tons at Peking, and another of much the same weight at Kioto, Japan. Nor, in fact, was it necessary to go so far afield to find bells much bigger than had ever been cast in England; a bell weighing more than 16 tons was successfully cast at Rouen in. the first year of the sixteenth century. Still, bell-founding is a very ticklish business, and Messrs Warner were not prepared to take the responsibility ■ of designing a bell more than twice as large as any they had yet produced, although they were quite willing to cast it if someone else would furnish, the design. This was accordingly supplied by Mr E. B. ■ Denison (afterwards Lord Grimthorpe). He was’ a parliamentary lawyer, in busy. practice, who had also, designed the Westminster clock that " was completed two years earlier.. .. • .... Tlie quarter-bells turned out an excellent set (they are still in use), but the big bell (Big Ben I.) was a failure. It proved to be nearly three tons overweight ; and ’ a few months after casting, while it was undergoing preliminary tests at ground-level, it developed a large crack. Investigation showed that there was a place in the rim where the two streams of metal, run into the mould from two separate crucibles, had never united. In consequence, Big Ben I. was condemned to be recast. This was done by the oldest firm, of bell-founders in England, Messrs Mears, of Whitechapel, who have been in business since the sixteenth century. Unhappily, Big Ben 11. nearly shared its predecessor’s fate: a few months after being hung in the Clock Tower it developed two surface cracks —Big Ben 1. had cracked right through—and was left silent for several years, the hours being struck on the four-ton quarter-bell. To the end of his life—he died .in 1905—Grimthorpe lost no opportunity of proclaiming his opinion that the bell had been badly cast; but the real reason seems to be that ho had prescribed a very brittle composition (22 parts of copper to 7 of tin) for the bell, in conjunction with an exceedingly heavy hammer weighing 13cwt. Neither of these innovations has survived; on the other hand, his peculiar method of hanging the bell ultimately proved its salvation. Unless Big Ben were to be sent up outside the Clock Tower (which would need an enormous expense for scaffolding) it would have to pass through the air shafts, none of which is much more than Bft square in section. So Grimthorpe designed the bell—which is 9ft across the rim—with a low crown surmounted by * flat metal button, like a gigantio* collar-stud, to hang it by; and then he sent it up the air shaft sideways, in a special cradle. Being hung in this way, it could easily be turned round until the cracks" came at a point where the vibration caused by the hammer was at a minimum ; and after this had been done and the hammer considerably lightened, Big Ben returned to duty. Its tone is, and always will be, not quite flawless; but since the advent of broadcasting it has become so familiar to listeners-all over the world that any proposal to recast the bell would probably meet with strenuous opposition-sunless, indeed. it should show signs of cracking further. But that seems very unlikely.