Introduction

Strictly speaking, “Big Ben” is the bell, not the tower — but the name took over the whole structure decades ago, so this guide covers both: the Great Bell, and the tower that houses it, officially the Elizabeth Tower, at the north end of the Palace of Westminster. Most visitors know the headline story — a Victorian fire, a Gothic tower, a famous bong. Fewer know that the site has held a clock since the 1200s, that the tower’s most reliable timekeeping tool is a pile of old pennies, or that there’s a prison cell built into it. This guide covers all of it: the well-known history, the overlooked details, and everything you need to know if you want to climb the 334 steps yourself.

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History

A clock tower before this clock tower

Big Ben wasn’t the first timepiece to stand on this site. Records point to a clock tower at Westminster as early as the 1290s, and a documented clock existing there by the 1360s — reportedly the first public chiming clock in England. Long before Victorian engineers arrived, Westminster had already been keeping time for the city for centuries. That earlier structure is long gone, but it’s worth knowing that the “new” tower is really the latest chapter in a much older story.

Rising from a fire

The story most people know starts with destruction. On 16 October 1834, a fire tore through the old Palace of Westminster, destroying most of the medieval building and leaving only fragments — Westminster Hall among them — standing. The disaster cleared the way for an entirely new Houses of Parliament, built in the grand Gothic Revival style that defines the skyline today.

Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin

Architect Charles Barry won the competition to design the replacement palace, and it was his decision to include a clock tower at its northern end. Barry brought in Augustus Pugin, a Gothic Revival specialist, to work out the tower’s intricate detailing — the pinnacles, tracery, and carved symbols of the four nations that still cover its surface. Construction of the tower began in 1843, with the foundation stone laid that September. Pugin’s work on the tower would be some of his last — he died in 1852, not long after completing the designs.

A bell that kept cracking

The Great Bell had a difficult birth. The first casting, in 1856, cracked during testing before it ever reached the tower. A second bell was cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1858 and hauled to the tower by sixteen horses — and this one cracked too, within months of being installed in 1859. Rather than cast a third bell, engineers rotated it, cut a section around the crack to stop it spreading, and fitted a lighter hammer. That imperfect, slightly duller tone is the sound that’s rung out ever since — meaning the “iconic” bong most people associate with Britain is technically the sound of a broken bell.

A melody borrowed from Cambridge

The four-note phrase that chimes before each hour — known as the Westminster Quarters — didn’t originate at Westminster at all. It was written in 1793 for a new clock at the University Church of St Mary the Great in Cambridge, commonly credited to music professor John Randall and his undergraduate pupil William Crotch. It’s long been claimed the melody echoes a phrase from Handel’s “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” — a claim that’s repeated often but never definitively proven. Cambridge students nicknamed it “Jowett’s Jig” after Joseph Jowett, the professor originally commissioned to produce it. When Westminster’s engineers borrowed the tune decades later for their new clock, they turned a university in-joke into one of the most recognisable sounds in the world.

Kept accurate by old pennies

The clock’s mechanism, designed by lawyer-turned-horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, was revolutionary for its time — accurate to within a couple of seconds a week, an achievement considered close to impossible for a clock this size in the 1850s. What keeps it accurate today is strikingly low-tech: a small stack of pre-decimal pennies rests on the pendulum, and adding or removing a single penny shifts its centre of gravity enough to change the clock’s speed by roughly 0.4 seconds a day. The pendulum sits inside a windproof case, and the clock is still wound by hand, three times a week, in a job that takes over an hour each time.

The prison in the belfry

One-third of the way up, at step 114, sits a small, windowless room that served as a holding cell for MPs found in breach of parliamentary conduct. Its last recorded use was in 1880, when Charles Bradlaugh — an atheist MP who refused to swear his oath of allegiance on the Bible — was held there overnight. He was released the next day but barred from taking his seat in the Commons for five more years.

The Ayrton Light

At the very top of the tower, above the belfry, sits a small lantern known as the Ayrton Light. It was installed at Queen Victoria’s request so she could tell from Buckingham Palace whether Parliament was still sitting after dark — it switches on whenever the Commons or Lords are in session at night, a detail most visitors on the ground never notice. It was switched off entirely during the Second World War blackout and stayed dark for over five and a half years, only relit in 1945.

Surviving the Blitz

Big Ben was a highly visible target for German bombers during the Second World War, and on 10 May 1941 a raid struck the Houses of Parliament and the surrounding area, damaging the clock tower itself — shattering windows, scorching stonework, and damaging two of the clock’s dials, while destroying the adjoining Commons Chamber. Remarkably, the clock kept working through the attack, and the bell went on chiming throughout the war (its bongs were, however, deliberately silenced by radio broadcasters in 1916 during the First World War, to avoid the sound helping German zeppelins navigate towards London).

Silenced by two world wars

The clock faces were dimmed and unlit during both world wars to deny enemy aircraft a navigational landmark, on top of the deliberate silencing of the bells during the First World War. It’s a rare case of one of London’s most recognisable sights and sounds being switched off entirely by design, for years at a stretch.

A slight lean, and a very long lifespan

Because of ground conditions that have shifted since construction, the tower leans very slightly to the north-west — by roughly 230 millimetres at the top. It sounds alarming, but engineers estimate the tower could keep leaning at this rate for another 4,000 to 10,000 years before it becomes a structural concern, so it’s a curiosity rather than a warning sign.

Becoming the Elizabeth Tower

For most of its life the tower had no formal name of its own — it was simply the Clock Tower. That changed in 2012, when it was renamed the Elizabeth Tower to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, more than 150 years after it was built.

The 2017–2022 restoration

Between 2017 and 2022, the tower underwent the most extensive conservation project in its history — a five-year, roughly £80 million effort covering everything from the gilded spire to the base of the staircase, involving stonemasons, glassblowers, gilders and clock mechanics. The clock faces were restored to their original Victorian colour scheme (a deep “celestial blue” rather than the black most visitors had grown up seeing), the scaffolding came down in stages through 2021 and early 2022, and the bells resumed their normal chiming that spring. One quieter change from the project: the tower gained its first-ever onsite toilet facilities, over 160 years after it was built.

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Design & Engineering, in brief

• Height: 316 feet (96 metres)
• Steps: 334 to the belfry where the bell hangs, and a further 65 above that to the lantern at the very top — 399 in total
• Clock dials: Four faces, each 22.5 feet (6.9 metres) across, made from 312 individual pieces of opal glass
• Monarchs: The bell has now chimed through the reigns of eight British monarchs, from Victoria to Charles III
• The Latin inscription: Each dial is ringed with the words “Domine salvam fac Reginam nostram Victoriam primam” — “O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First.” It’s never been updated for later monarchs; it stays as a fixed piece of Victorian history rather than a live royal dedication.

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Practical Information

(Verified against parliament.uk, August 2026 — reconfirm before publishing, as prices and schedules change.)

• Tickets: Big Ben tours are run directly by UK Parliament — not by any third-party operator. Tickets for tours from 1 August 2026 are £55 for adults and £35 for children aged 11–17. Under-11s cannot take the tour at all.
• How to book: Tickets are released online three months in advance, on the second Wednesday of every month at 10am, via tickets.parliament.uk. They sell out quickly — set a reminder for the release time.
• UK residents: Can request a free tour by contacting their local MP, subject to availability.
• Tour length: 90 minutes, covering 334 spiral stairs with no lift and only limited rest points.
• Age and fitness requirements: Minimum age 11; visitors must be comfortable with a sustained stair climb and with loud noise at close range when the bell strikes (ear defenders are provided). Toilets are available at the start and end of the tour, not partway through.
• Accessibility: Standard tours are physically demanding and not suitable for visitors with mobility difficulties, but UK Parliament offers separate accessible tours — worth requesting directly if the standard climb isn’t suitable for you.
• Nearest station: Westminster Underground station (District, Circle and Jubilee lines) is a two-minute walk away.
• Best viewing without a ticket: If you’re not climbing the tower, the classic photo spots are Westminster Bridge and the South Bank opposite, or Parliament Square. Early morning or dusk gives the best light on the stonework, and if Parliament is sitting after dark, look up for the Ayrton Light.

Big Ben sits within easy reach of several other Landmarks & Monuments covered on Chronicle Trails, including the Palace of Westminster it forms part of, the Tower of London further along the river, and the London Eye directly across the Thames. For more on London’s history and landmarks, visit our England hub or browse the full Travel Guides.