The project will also allow modernization. While lawmakers debate the cost and practicalities of that, the work on saving the most famous bit of the building will go ahead. The entire Palace of Westminster is in urgent need of repair, work that could cost £5.7 billion and take up to four decades. “It had a fantastically important effect for disseminating the idea of Greenwich Mean Time.' When the clock began chiming, in 1859, it helped to move London to the idea of keeping one standard time, he said. “When this was built, it was cutting-edge technology,' said Adam Watrobski, the architect overseeing the project. It is wound-no longer entirely by hand-three times a week. The clock is accurate to within a second, with the clockmakers adding or removing old English pennies from the pendulum to speed or slow it. On the ironwork, a small plate reveals that the structure was built by Jabez James in 1856.įour microphones in the tower carry the sound of the bells to the BBC for live broadcast at the start of news bulletins. The tower has also shifted, listing 220 millimeters to the northwest.Īt the top, there are pools of water and rust is visible everywhere, including on the surface of the 13.5-tonne bell that has given the tower its nickname. An earlier restoration project used modern plastic-based paint that increases the effects of condensation, causing rust damage. All the way up the 334 steps to the top of the tower, there are cracks in the stonework.

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