It’s nonsense to silence Big Ben, says clockmaker who tended it for decades

The clockmaker who maintained Big Ben’s clock for decades has branded as “nonsense” the decision to silence the Great Bell for four years.

Melvyn Lee, who knows the clock mechanism better than anyone, has told The Daily Telegraph that there were no great barriers to striking the bell during renovation work.

His insistence that Big Ben is being needlessly put out of action will heap added pressure on parliamentary authorities to reverse the plan to silence it from Monday.

In a further call for Big Ben to carry on ringing, the project manager who oversaw the Elizabeth Tower’s last major renovation, in the mid 1980s, said it was “absurd” to silence the bell. 

Rodney Perry, who was in charge of maintenance at the time, said the bell carried on chiming for almost the entire time during two years of renovation without damage to builders’ hearing.

Both senior figures have written today to The Daily Telegraph protesting against the decision to silence Big Ben until 2021 at the earliest.

Mr Lee, who owns Thwaites & Reed, one of Britain’s oldest clockmakers, which maintained the Great Clock at Westminster for more than 30 years from the mid-Seventies, said: “There is something amiss. The need to close it down for four years is nonsense.”

Mr Lee said he was willing to give advice to MPs about ways of keeping the bell ringing while work continues. He said there were two methods for striking the bell – one using a lever manufactured by Thwaites & Reed, which would allow the bell to be rung on the hour whenever authorities chose. The other would use a “mechanical cam” – a device installed by the bell’s manufacturer the Whitechapel Foundry – that enables it to be tolled by hand.

Mr Lee said he did not recognise claims by the House of Commons authorities that it would take half a day to prime the bell.

The clockmaker also said builders would only need to wear ear defenders if working next to the bell. He said the bell is not heard that loudly when working elsewhere in the Elizabeth Tower, including by the clock mechanism, where he used to work.

It would take two weeks, he said, to dismantle the clock mechanism, clean it up and put it back in place.

Mr Perry, who was project manager during the two-year renovation of the tower in 1983, said: “We didn’t seem to have any issues with the ringing of the bells. Workers wore ear defenders when working close to the bells. It was only when we stopped the clock to do some repairs on the mechanism itself that the chimes were silenced. But that was only for very short periods. It is absurd to silence the bell for four years.”

MPs who approved the £29 million renovation of the tower were not told it would entail silencing Big Ben until the work’s completion in 2021.

Theresa May waded into the row, demanding a rethink of the decision. She said: “It can’t be right for Big Ben to be silent for four years”.

The decision is now being reviewed by the House of Commons Commission, made up of MPs and officials, which rubber-stamped the work.

Authorities had insisted that ringing Big Ben compromised the health and safety of workers on site but also said it would not be practical or cost effective for the bell to resume chiming after workers had gone home for the day.