Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock in the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster. The nickname is often also used to refer to the clock and the tower......

Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock in the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster. The nickname is often also used to refer to the clock and the tower.

The clock is the world's largest four-faced, chiming clock and the third largest free-standing clock tower in the world. The clock tower is situated at the north-eastern end of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. The Big Ben clock tower has been referred to incorrectly as St Stephen's Tower, which is a low tower above St Stephen's Entrance.

The Tower

The tower was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design for a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire on the night of 22 October 1834.

The new Parliament was built in a Neo-gothic Italian style. Although Barry was the chief architect of the Palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the clock tower, which resembles earlier Pugin designs, including one for Scarisbrick Hall. The design for the Clock Tower was Pugin's last design before his final descent into madness and death, and Pugin himself wrote, at the time of Barry's last visit to him to collect the drawings: "I never worked so hard in my life for Mr Barry for tomorrow I render all the designs for finishing his bell tower & it is beautiful." The tower is designed in Pugin's celebrated Gothic Revival style, and is 96.3 metres (315.9 ft) high.

The bottom 61 metres (200 ft) of the structure is the Clock Tower consists of brickwork with sand coloured Anston limestone cladding. The remainder of the tower's height is a framed spire of cast iron. The tower is founded on a 15-metre (49 ft) square raft, made of 3-metre (9.8 ft) thick concrete, at a depth of 4 metres (13 ft) below ground level. The four clock faces are 55 metres (180 ft) above ground. The interior volume of the tower is 4,650 cubic metres (164,200 cubic feet).

Because of changes in ground conditions since construction (notably tunnelling for the Jubilee Line extension), the tower leans slightly to the north-west, by roughly 220 millimetres (8.66 in) at the clock face, giving an inclination of approximately 1/250. Due to thermal effects it oscillates annually by a few millimetres east and west.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the information.