Big Ben Gets A Window Clean

A crack specialist team have been at work on one of the four faces of Big Ben’s clock at the Houses of Parliament in London today, abseiling down the clock face to perform vital maintenance and cleaning.
The brave four are suspended some 90 metres above the ground as they carry out the work, which will take all week, working on one face of the clock per day with one day set aside at the end just in case there are any weather delays. It is the first time in four years that the clock has been given a scrubbing.

Brave abseilers with head for heights give Big Ben's tower its annual scrub: The face of the Big Ben tower was given a scrub this morning by four cleaners with a head for heights. Specialist abseilers clambered down the 96 metre tall landmark and spent the day washing the clock face.

Every four years window cleaner’s abseil from the belfry and wash each clock face. Time is spent inspecting and repairing cast iron joints and the opaque white glass in the four faces, all while hanging 60 metres from the ground. Each seven metre diameter clock face has 312 panes which can often become damaged by pigeons and bell vibrations.

Clean-up: the four abseilers clambered down from Big Ben this morning.

The clock will continue to keep time during the cleaning process, but the hands on the face being washed do not move. Deputy keeper of the clock Steve Jaggs said: "Big Ben is one of the UK's greatest icons, and cleaning the Great Clock is a vital part of its maintenance. "The process is complex and requires a real head for heights. We have an expert team who will ensure that the clock is thoroughly cleaned and that this piece of our national heritage is safeguarded for future generations."

He said: “The glass panels over the clock face are terribly thin and fragile, because originally the dials were lit by gas, which is very dim. Birds can fly into them and break them. This is why our window cleaners have to be extremely careful.

Big Ben's clock gets big bath from abseiling cleaners: Dangling sixty metres above the ground from one of Britain's most famous landmarks, it is far from being an ordinary day in the office for these window cleaners. The four workers, wearing helmets and climbing gear, are tasked with buffing and shining the 312 pieces of glass that make up the iconic clock face on the Westminster tower that houses Big Ben. The Great Clock, which sits atop Parliament’s newly-named Elizabeth Tower, began ticking in 1859 and was last cleaned in 2010.

One face of the clock will be cleaned every day from Monday, with Tuesday’s crew working in the rays of the rising sun, and the north and west dials to be tackled on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Paul Robeson, chairman of the British Watch and Clock Makers’ Guild, which maintains around 2,000 clocks across Parliament, told the BBC’s Today programme the cleaners were “very brave or mad, one or the other.”

He said: “The glass panels over the clock face are terribly thin and fragile, because originally the dials were lit by gas, which is very dim. Birds can fly into them and break them. This is why our window cleaners have to be extremely careful. “It’s no longer the biggest clock, it’s no longer the biggest bell, it’s no longer the tallest clock, or any of those things. But it is the most famous the world over.” The stopping of each side's clock for cleaning will also give technicians a chance to carry out essential maintenance on the 155-year-old mechanism.

Both hands were designed to be made of cast iron, but that proved too heavy, so gunmetal was used instead. But the minute hand was still too weighty and would struggle up to the point of midnight before dropping down four minutes in one go, so had to be replaced with a hollow copper equivalent.