The Postcard
A postally unused postcard bearing no publisher's name. The card has a divided back, on which is printed:
'The Houses of Parliament -
otherwise the New Palace of
Westminster - were designed
and built by Sir Charles Barry
in 1836, at a cost of about
£3,000,000.
The Clock Tower contains Big
Ben, an immense bell of 13½
tons.
During the sitting of Parliament,
a powerful light is exhibited
nightly on this Tower, and a
Union Jack in daytime.'
The Stopping of the Big Ben Clock
On the 30th. April 1997, at 12:11 pm, London's iconic Big Ben clock stopped ticking. For 54 minutes, the most famous clock in the world failed to keep time.
Completed in 1859, Big Ben has a long history of technical issues. The first bell cast for the tower cracked before it could be installed, and the second bell also developed a crack shortly after installation, resulting in silence from the tower until 1862.
The bells stopped ringing again during World War I, and the tower was not illuminated at night for the duration of World War II, when most of London was kept dark to make German bombing more raids difficult. Despite the heavy damage that the Blitz inflicted on London, however, the clock stayed within a second and a half of Greenwich Mean Time for the duration of the war.
During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour -- the sound of freedom. However, ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast chimes. This information offered invaluable help to the Luftwaffe. When the British Secret Service discovered this, they replaced the live broadcast with a recording of the famous chimes.
In August 1949, a group of starlings decided the clock’s tremendous minute hand would make a suitable place for an evening perch. The copper appendage attracted so many birds that their collective weight slowed the clockwork by more than four and a half minutes. The error was corrected within a few hours.
Since then, both extreme heat and the build-up of snow have caused Big Ben to stop ticking. In 1962, snow delayed the bells, causing the capital of Great Britain to ring in the New Year ten minutes later than the rest of the country.
The April 1997 stoppage occurred the day before that year's general election, but the malfunction was not a factor in the voting, which Tony Blair's "New Labour" won in a landslide over incumbent Prime Minister John Major.
Big Ben stopped again in May of 2005, on one of the hottest May days ever recorded in London.
The Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament after its occupants, the Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London.
The first royal palace constructed on the site dated from the 11th century, and Westminster became the primary residence of the Kings of England until fire destroyed much of the complex in 1512.
After that, it served as the home of the Parliament of England, which had met there since the 13th century, and also as the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice, based in and around Westminster Hall. In 1834 an even greater fire ravaged the heavily rebuilt Houses of Parliament, and the only significant medieval structures to survive were Westminster Hall, the Cloisters of St Stephen's, the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, and the Jewel Tower.
In the subsequent competition for the reconstruction of the Palace, the architect Charles Barry won with a design for new buildings in the Gothic Revival style, specifically inspired by the English Perpendicular Gothic style of the 14th.–16th. centuries.
The remains of the Old Palace (except the detached Jewel Tower) were incorporated into its much larger replacement, which contains over 1,100 rooms organised symmetrically around two series of courtyards, and which has a floor area of 112,476 m2 (1,210,680 sq. ft).
Part of the New Palace's area of 3.24 hectares (8 acres) was reclaimed from the River Thames, which is the setting of its nearly 300-metre long (980 ft) façade, called the River Front.
Augustus Pugin, a leading authority on Gothic architecture and style, assisted Barry, and designed the interior of the Palace. Construction started in 1840 and lasted for 30 years, suffering great delays and cost overruns, as well as the death of both leading architects; works for the interior decoration continued intermittently well into the 20th century.
Major conservation work has taken place since then to reverse the effects of London's air pollution, and extensive repairs followed the Second World War, including the reconstruction of the Commons Chamber following its bombing in 1941.
The Elizabeth Tower, in particular, often referred to by the name of its main bell, Big Ben, has become an iconic landmark of London and of the United Kingdom in general, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, and an emblem of parliamentary democracy.
Accolades for the Palace of Westminster
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia called the new palace 'A dream in stone'. The Palace of Westminster has been a Grade I listed building since 1970, and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.
