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| Sunday, 5 December 2004 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Timekeeper of Britain
This 316 feet tall clock tower was completed between 1858-59. Although most believe that the Big Ben is the name of the clock tower, it actually refers to the 13 ton bell hung within. This bell originally came from the old Palace of Westminster. It was given to the Dean of St. Paul's by William III. Before arriving at its present home in Westminster, it was refashioned in Whitechapel in 1858. The BBC first broadcast the chimes on December 31, 1923 through a microphone in the turret connected to Broadcasting House. The Big Ben weighs over 13 tons (13,760 kg) while the clock mechanism alone weighs about five tons. The figures on the clock face are about two feet long, the minute spaces are one foot square and the copper minute hands are 14 feet long. The four dials of the clock are 23 feet square. Regulated with a stack of coins placed on the huge pendulum, Big Ben is an excellent timekeeper, and has rarely stopped. During World War II in 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the Commons Chamber of the Houses of Parliament, but the clock tower remained intact and Big Ben continued to keep the time. The clock tower even has cells to imprison Members of Parliament for a breach of parliamentary privilege; the last recorded case of such a breach was in 1880. Big Ben was cast on April 10, 1858, but its story begins much earlier. In 1844, the British Parliament decided that the new buildings for the Houses of Parliament, then under construction, should incorporate a tower and clock. The work was awarded to the architect Charles Barry, while the specification for the clock was drawn up by the Astronomer Royal, George Airy. The designer of the clock, Edmund Beckett Denison, later Sir Edmund Beckett, was recruited in 1851. The clock was built by E.J. Dent and Company, and completed in 1854. Casting of the chime bells was undertaken by George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Mears originally quoted a price of 2401 sterling pounds for casting the bell, but this was offset by 1829 sterling pounds by the metal he reclaimed from an old bell so that the actual invoice was for 572 sterling pounds. It took 20 minutes to fill the mould of the bell with molten metal, and 20 days for the metal to solidify and cool. Transporting the bell to the Houses of Parliament was a major event greeted by thousands of people lining the roads. The bells of the Great Clock of Westminster rang across London for the first time on May 31, 1859, and Parliament had a special sitting to decide on a suitable name for the bell. Some believe that it was named after a popular heavyweight boxer named Benjamin Caunt while some think that it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, a large-built politician of the time, who was the Parliamentary Commissioner of Works. The administrative centre of Colombo
The Town Hall is in the heart of Colombo, close to the area called Lipton's Circus, and faces the Vihara Maha Devi Park (formerly Victoria Park), the largest park in the city. Situated in the middle of large, sprawling grounds, the building is home to the Colombo Municipal Council, which attends to the administrative functions of the Colombo city. The Municipal Council relieves the central government of the full burden of city administration and of providing efficient and adequate machinery for supplying the needs of the urban community. The Colombo Town Hall was completed in 1928. It came to house the Municipal Council, which had been established in January 1866, under the Ordinance of 1865 brought up to create Municipal Councils to Colombo and Kandy as a means of training the Ceylonese,as we were then known, in self-government. Before the Council was established, the administration of the city was in charge of a Collector; John Macdowell of the Madras Service was the first to hold this post. After 1833, the Government Agent of the Western Province administered the city until the Municipal Council was established. The Legislative Council of Ceylon, by a Bill, constituted the Colombo Municipal Council in 1865 and it met for the first time on January 16, 1866. At the time of the establishment of the Municipal Council, the population in the area was around 80,000. |
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| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
Most of you may have seen at least a picture of the Big Ben in London.
It is one of the city's best-known landmarks and is situated next to the
Houses of Parliament. The faces of the Great Clock of Westminster are
illuminated at night and this is when the tower looks its best. When the
British parliament is meeting too, a light shines above the clock face.
The large white Town Hall building, which has a resemblance to the
White House in the USA, must be a familiar sight to all of you living in
and around Colombo. Even most of you who aren't Colombo residents may have
seen this building at least once.
