Big Ben

Big Ben.

I was searching for information on it online, (to write my Amazing Race story), and I stumbled on this great article. It’s interesting and contains facts, (everything I find missing in the STAR). I would gladly be a journalist if I could write like this. But anyway, if I cant write like this, I’ll just be a book tester. :D

For 13 years Brian Davis was the official clock-tower guide for the Palace of Westminster. Recently retired, in his working life he took more than 7,000 tours up the 315ft Gothic tower that is home to the bell called Big Ben, climbing the 334 spiralling stone stepsfive times a day. In the process he took more than 5 million steps up and down, clocking up the equivalent of 76 ascents of Everest.

"I was smoking 80 cigarettes a day at the time, too," he says. "But when I had a medical the doctor said I had the blood pressure of an 18-year-old. Once I got all the way up to the belfry and dropped the keys, which meant going all the way back down and up again. My best time was one minute 26 seconds."

Mr Davis never ceases to be amazed that most people seem to know so little about Big Ben and its tower and the fact that they can apply for a tour through their local MP. (Parties are restricted to 16 and children must be over 11.)

He has escorted the blind and deaf, a man paralysed from the waist down who crawled the entire way for charity, and a man who had just had open-heart surgery. One person had a turn at the top. He soon recovered but the ambulance man who had to climb the steps after him was in a terrible state by the time he reached the top. And, of course, it's not just a physical feat. Vertigo can strike at any time. From the top, the bottom of the stairwell looks like a postage stamp. The most terrified man he ever encountered, Mr Davis says, turned out to be a jumbo jet pilot.

When asked about any famous visitors, he says: "I once took Prince William and his school class up, and the former prime minister James Callaghan came up with his grandchildren in crash helmets and a hoist."

He was always surprised to see people walk past Big Ben every day and check their watches by it, without a thought for its history. "Beyond telling the time, people don't know much about London's most famous landmark."

Which is not something anybody who spends an hour or so in Mr Davis's company could ever be accused of. He has a head for facts and figures, as well as heights. Big Ben, he tells me, reeling off the numbers, weighs 13.5 tonnes, is 8.8ft in diameter and 7.2ft high. Designed by Edmund Denison, MP QC, and the Astronomer Royal Sir George Airey, and made for £1,800 by EJ Dent, the first bell was even bigger, but was scrapped after it cracked during tests. The second, cast at Whitechapel Foundry where America's Liberty Bell was cast, first sounded on 11 July 1859. It was first heard on radio on New Year's Eve in 1923 (the microphone was inside a football bladder) and made its first television appearance in 1949.

The tower is made from Cornish granite, Caen stone and Yorkshire Anstone stone, and each 23ft-diameter clock face contains 312 pieces of pot opal glass. The copper-sheet minute hands are 13.7ft long and their tips travel 118 miles in a year. Until 1913 the clock was wound by hand, which took 30 hours a week, but this is now done by an electric motor. Until 1900 the dials of the four faces were illuminated by gas burners.

Mr Davis's enthusiasm for his subject is infectious, and he found his true calling as Big Ben's guide. Born near the Tower of London, the son of a policeman, he had a variety of jobs before finding his niche. He started his working life as a newspaper copy boy, moving on to become a soup deliveryman before taking the post of warden at the Science Museum. In 1968 he became a general dogsbody at the Houses of Parliament.

As he outlines the history of Big Ben, his anecdotes add colour. It turns out it was named after either a famous heavyweight Victorian boxer, Benjamin Caunt, or the Commissioner of Works, Sir Benjamin Hall. The bell, which arrived by river after very nearly sinking the boat, was dragged to the site by 16 white horses.