This lesson will teach you about London's famous
clock, Big Ben, whose bells are now silenced for the next 4 years. London will
sound very different! If you have ever visited London, or even
if you have looked at pictures of London, then I am pretty sure you have seen Big
Ben. It is the most iconic image of London – the huge, ornate clock at the top
of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, and this is why I have decided to
make it number 1 in my series of blogs on DailyStep.com about famous British
buildings.
Big
Ben is actually the
name of the enormous bell inside the clock of the Houses of Parliament. We also
say Big Ben when we refer to the whole clock tower as well. You can see the
clock in the top picture, and the bell in the bottom picture. The clock first
chimed its famous chimes on 31stMay, 1859. There are actually 5 bells in the
clock. Big Ben is the biggest bell, and every hour a hammer strikes the time on
it. If it is five o’clock, the hammer strikes it five times. The other 4 bells
are called ‘quarter bells’, because they chime every fifteen minutes, or every
quarter of an hour.
Why is it called Big Ben? No-one is
quite sure, but it was named after one of two men who were both known as Big
Ben at the time the clock was built. The first man was Sir Benjamin Hall. He
commissioned the new Houses of Parliament to be built, and he was also a very
large man. His friends called him Big Ben. The second man was Benjamin Caunt,
who was the heavyweight boxing champion of 1841. His nickname was Big Ben.
Big Ben is Britain’s most important
clock. Its chimes are used at the beginning of many TV and radio news programs,
a tradition that dates back to 1923. The clock has hardly ever stopped – even
during the Second World War, when London was bombed in the Blitz and part of
the Houses of Parliament was destroyed, the clock continued to strike the time.
The four clock faces of Big Ben are
illuminated when it gets dark, as you can see in the
picture,
and we can see them from miles around in London. It’s one of the most famous
landmarks
in the London skyline, along with St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London.
These days, though, it is getting harder to see them from a distance as many modern
skyscrapers are built.
by Jane Lawson at DailyStep.com