The eccentric genius behind Big Ben

One test of great architecture is whether it, and the city it stands in, can be recognised from its silhouette alone. There is Spavento’s campanile – or bell tower – in Venice by St Marco’s Basilica and Giotto’s by the Duomo in Florence. London has a campanile too, perhaps more recognisable than its Italian precedents. Designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the clock tower of Parliament houses the bell known as Big Ben. New Year’s Eve 2023 marks 100 years since its bongs were broadcast to the nation for the first time. A century on from that televised spectacle, the eery, throbbing noise of Big Ben remains one of the most familiar and evocative of sounds. 

‘There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour irrevocable,’ wrote Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway. Big Ben’s quarter-hour chimes are based on a 1793 tune called ‘Westminster Quarters’, itself sourced from Handel’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’.