After five long years of refurbishment, the world’s most famous clock will officially come out of its silence on Sunday and start telling Londoners the time again. Big Ben, which dominates the British parliament, will thus return to its usual rhythm after the meticulous cleaning of more than 1,000 parts that compose it. The date coincides with “Remembrance Sunday”, celebrated on the Sunday following November 11 to celebrate the armistice of the First World War.
In five years, the clock has rung on a few rare occasions thanks to a substitute electrical mechanism, such as recently for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II who died on September 8. Perched at the top of the Elizabeth Tower – 96 meters high – the bells are protected by an external net to prevent bats and pigeons from rushing into the belfry.
A traditional method
“It’s the sound of London that’s back,” says watchmaker Ian Westworth, 60, who is finalizing the final tests. During the works, various parts of the bells were cleaned and repainted, but the bells themselves did not move. Big Ben is so imposing that moving it would require destroying the floor of the tower. The most difficult task of the works was to remove the mechanism of the clock, heavy of 11.5 tons and dating from 1859, in order to clean the cogs.
Before the renovation, watchmakers checked the accuracy of the time with phones. From now on, the clock is calibrated by GPS thanks to the National Physics Laboratory. But the method for adjusting the time remains very traditional: old coins are used to add or remove weight from the gigantic springs of the clock, making it possible to gain or lose a second.