Supplying the nation with timely bongs when Big Ben falls silent
SIR – Since the time on the Elizabeth Tower will continue to be displayed when Big Ben falls silent (report, August 15), one practical solution to the bell’s absence would be to connect electronically the timing mechanism to a high-quality, suitably enhanced recording of the chimes and transmit them in synchronism with the displayed time. Done well, it should be indistinguishable from the real thing.
Better by far than silence. John Hepworth
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire
SIR – I regret the silencing of Big Ben. Health and safety strikes again. Heather Remblance
Apperley Park, Gloucestershire
SIR – I was comforted to read in your report that the four-year, £29 million works on the Elizabeth Tower would make it more energy efficient. Steve Siddall
Holt, Wiltshire SIR – James Gray MP says that “Big Ben is terribly important to the mental well-being of the nation”. This may explain why we Northerners are all bonkers. We can’t hear Big Ben up here. Dr Norman Russell
Liverpool
SIR – The renovation of Big Ben should be seen as an opportunity to hear clock towers from all round the nation, cared for and operated by volunteers.
In the village where we live, Tysoe in Warwickshire, we have a wonderful clock ringing out the hours and the quarters across the fields.
If this idea has support it might get the BBC sound department out from their bunkers in London and Salford.
This is not to replace Big Ben, but to give him a breathing space to recover. Gill Roache
Lower Tysoe, Warwickshire
SIR – Twice in the early Sixties I visited the retired physicist and inventor Alfred Rickard-taylor at his home in Hampshire. He had inherited a set of tubular chimes from the BBC that were manually struck, on air, whenever the land line between studio and microphone in the Big Ben loft defaulted. Mr Taylor proudly showed me the chimes hanging in the stairwell of his home and the superb master clock he had built and wall-mounted.
Perhaps interested parties could locate these unique substitute chimes. They could be temporarily installed in the Speaker’s residence at Westminster, so that he could wield the hammer at the appropriate times.
It would mean his leaving the chair in the Commons in order to stand on another chair next to the chimes in order to reach the longest tube. He would have to wear the mandatory ear defenders.
A video link showing the Speaker in his new role could be fed to a big screen in Parliament Square where nationals and foreign visitors would be able to see that defeat in times of hardship is not to be tolerated. Roy Randall
Bognor Regis, West Sussex