Time stops as Big Ben undergoes repairs for first time since 1983
(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-10-29 06:25

Big Ben: London landmark

LONDON: Big Ben, the world-famous clock tower at the Houses of Parliament in London, is to be stopped for maintenance work over the weekend, the House of Commons said.

The riverside landmark is to fall silent after the 9:00 am (0800 GMT) chimes until about 4:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Sunday - its longest maintenance stoppage since 1983.

Engineers will carry out a thorough inspection of the clock, while the rubber hammer buffers on three of the four quarter-hour bells and the hour bell will be routinely replaced.

Engineers will also need to retune the bells, which could take several hours.

The work is part of a maintenance review intended to form the basis of a new five-yearly maintenance regime to ensure the clock's reliability.

Big Ben is renowned for its accuracy, surviving a dozen attacks by German bombers during World War II when it continued to mark the time within one and a half seconds of Greenwich mean time.

It has been late on occasion. In 1962, snow accumulation caused the clock to ring in the new year 10 minutes late, and in 1976 it stopped when a piece of its machinery broke down.

It also ground to a halt on April 30, 1997, just 24 hours before the general election that put Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour Party in power, and once more three weeks later.

Strictly speaking, Big Ben is the 13-ton bell cast in April 1858 that hangs behind the clock atop Saint Steven's Tower, which rises 100 metres above the River Thames but the landmark is generally known around the world as Big Ben.

The clock repairers get an extra hour to complete their work overnight on Saturday when Britain sets all its clocks back by one hour as the nights draw in ahead of winter.