Chimes at Midnight

“By that extraordinary economy of association which only sound produces the boom of Big Ben strikes right into the heart of the exiled Englishman. “ So said a pre-war BBC Empire Service pamphlet explaining why its broadcasts were so evocative for many of its listeners, even those who had never set foot in Britain. Indeed, it was noted that for many years the sounds of Big Ben, evoking both the City of London and parliamentary democracy, as well as marking the passing of British time, was rated top amongst listener preferences for many years. (1)  

The chimes of Big Ben have been heard over the airwaves exactly 100 years ago when they were first broadcast to welcome in 1924.A century later folk will turn on their radios or switch on the telly for the midnight ‘bongs’ no doubt followed by a quick and not entirely tuneful drunken rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

Since that first broadcast the chimes of Big Ben have become part of the radio broadcasting furniture whether marking state or royal events, introducing the news, prefacing the silence on Remembrance Day or ushering in the New Year.

Back in 1923 it fell to BBC engineer A.G. Dryland to arrange for the first broadcast transmitted live from a rooftop opposite the Houses of Parliament, recording the chimes amongst the general noise of Westminster.

Edward Pawley’s definitive guide to BBC engineering in its first fifty years wrote:  

An important first was the inauguration of the long series of broadcasts by Big Ben. This took place at midnight on New Year’s Eve at the end of 1923 and was treated as an OB. It was followed by regular broadcasts twice a day from 9 March 1924. The microphone and amplifier were at first installed on the roof of Bridge Chambers, Bridge Steer, Westminster. The microphone (a Round Sykes) was enclosed in a biscuit tin filled with cotton wool, but was later transferred (still wrapped in cotton wool) to a football bladder sealed with a rubber solution to guard against the inclemency of the weather and suspended about 15 feet above the bells. 

By 1926 a permanent Marconi-Reisz microphone was installed in the Clock Tower and by the mid-50s they were using STC4035 mics.

Dryland spoke about that first broadcast in the 1936 programme Scrapbook for 1924. That and other audio clips featuring or about Big Ben are included in this short montage.

By the time the Empire Service launched in December 1932 the chimes were heard around the world for the first time and on Christmas Day that year they rang out at 3 pm just before the first live speech from King George V.  

When the first non-English language service, the Arabic service, started on 3 January 1938 the first news bulletin was read after the Big Ben chimes. The worldwide broadcasts of Big Ben became an important feature of the Empire Service (later the General Overseas Service, now the World Service). In the 1946 BBC Year Book a Colonial Governor wrote:

'It was in helping us to overcome this sense of isolation that the broadcasts from home became so valued. Perhaps the biggest thrill we got every day was hearing Big Ben strike. It carried us right back home, right into the centre of things; and yet at the same time brought an almost unbearable nostalgia’

The quarter hour and half hour chimes continued to be heard during the day on the World Service as part of the general continuity as different transmitters switched in and out of the English Service until about 20 years ago. (I’m guessing here, if you know when please contact me).  The BBC's Japanese Service also used to start its broadcasts with the chimes of Big Ben.

For many years the complete bongs preceded the Home Service 9pm news, in what was known as the ‘Big Ben Minute’. But when the main evening news at was moved to 10pm in September 1960 only the first stroke of the hour was heard before being faded out. This practice continues for Radio 4’s 6pm news and midnight news (they were re-introduced instead of the pips around June 1981).  The Big Ben chimes at 10 pm were dropped in April 1970, apart from weekends, when The World Tonight was launched.

In the 1970s you could also hear Big Ben at the start of the days broadcasting on Radios 1 and 2 at either 5.30 or 6.00. This practice ended when Radio 2 moved to 24 hours a day in January 1979. The bells were also heard on Sunday mornings on Radio 3, who obviously liked a lie-in at the weekend, when programmes started at 8 am.   

Until a couple of months ago for just over six years (from August 2017), apart from some special events and New Year’s Eve, the broadcasting of Big Ben was from recordings whilst the Elizabeth Tower and the clock mechanism was repaired and refurbished at a cost of £80 million. The chimes were back in action over a year ago (from November 2022), indeed I heard them in January when I was in London taking the photographs for this post. But it wasn’t until Radio 4’s Six O’Clock News on 6 November this year that live broadcasts returned. The delay was partially to allow the mechanism to ‘bed in’ and also to allow for the installation of four new microphones.

Evan Davis spoke to Parliamentary Clockmaker Ian Westworth about the restoration for Radio 4’s PM programme. 

In 2013 to mark the 90^th anniversary of that first broadcast, poet Ian McMillan wrote seven poems for the BBC Radio 4 Extra series Big Ben’s Chimes. The seven programmes, each running at 3 minutes, interspersed McMillan’s words with music and archive recordings. I’ve stitched them together for this omnibus version. The programme producer is Moy McGowan.

Tonight, at midnight, BBC Radio 3 will broadcast an edition of Slow Radio devoted to The Clock. It promises an “hypnotic audio journey, as we tumble inside the delicate mechanism of the clock”.  

 

Notes:

The seven episodes of Big Ben’s Chimes are titled: Maintaining Big Ben, Big Ben Seizes Up, Big Ben as an Icon of Britain, Big Ben as Beating Heart, Big Ben - Good News, New Year in War Time and First Broadcast. 

In this post I have referred to the ‘chimes of Big Ben’ but of course strictly speaking Big Ben is the name of the large 13.7 tonne bell that provides the ‘bongs’ in the note of E. There are the quarter bells varying in weight from 1.1 to 4 tonnes that provide G sharp, F sharp, E and B notes which are set are set to the following lines: “All through this hour, Lord be my Guide. And by thy power, no foot shall slide”

UK Parliamentary blog on Broadcasting Big Ben

BBC Archive page on Big Ben