Big Ben. Every schoolchild knows Big Ben refers to the Great Bell in London’s most famous clock and yet we persist in calling the tower itself by that familiar moniker. A defining symbol of the capital, Big Ben was part of the huge rebuilding project that took place after the catastrophic fire of 1834 destroyed much of the Houses of Parliament. Big Ben is not the first of parliament’s clock towers (that was a monument known as Great Edward, and later Great Tom, which was built in 1288-90), but it has come to symbolise London – and even Britain.
Big Ben’s chimes were first broadcast by the BBC on 31 December 1923, a tradition which endures to this day, and the clock has rarely stopped, even when a bomb destroyed the Commons chamber during the Second World War.
Palace of Westminster. After its medieval predecessor was dramatically engulfed by flames in 1834, heated discussions took place over the style of the new Palace of Westminster. Some favoured neoclassicism, as embodied by the White House in the US, but, as that style had associations with revolution and republicanism, the winning argument was made for a Gothic or Elizabethan building that would embody conservative values more fittingly. The winner of the 1835 competition to find a designer was well-known architect Charles Barry but, as his own style was classical, he enlisted the help of Bright Young Thing Augustus Welby Pugin, who, though the tender age of 23, had devoted himself to the pursuit of Gothic architecture.
Paid just £400 by Barry for assisting him with drawings, Pugin, some say, deserves the lion’s share of credit, particularly in the detail of his work: most of the palace’s sumptuous Gothic interiors are his down to doorknobs and spilltrays. Certainly the enormity of the project did neither man’s health any good: the new palace wasn’t completed until 1870 by which time Barry had died, with his son Edward taking over, and Pugin had been committed to Bedlam, breathing his last soon after in 1852.
Royal Albert Hall. There’s a tragic story behind the iconic red-brick building standing proudly in the heart of South Kensington. Originally called the Central Hall, the project was started by Prince Albert with the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which took place in Hyde Park, just opposite the site. But when the Prince Consort died of typhoid in 1861, building was suspended until Albert’s collaborator on the Great Exhibition, Henry Cole, took the helm and work began again in 1867.
Inspired by Roman amphitheatres, the elliptical hall, capped by a glazed dome, is built from over six million red bricks and 80,000 blocks of terracotta, and features a frieze in mosaic that spans the entire 244-metre circumference and portrays various countries bringing their offerings to the Great Exhibition.
An emotional Queen Victoria opened the building, renamed the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, on 29 March 1871. The Prince of Wales spoke on behalf of his mother, whose only recorded comment was that the hall reminded her of the British constitution.
