Big Ben is struck by the clock mechanism, and can't be rung.
You were listening to the half-muffled tenor of Westminster Abbey.
I kind of thought that, Nick, but the bbc commentator definitely mentioned Big Ben. Whichever bell it was, it was impressive.
Westminster Abbey's tenor is 30cwt, which is about average for a heavy ten; both Rochester Cathedral and All Saints Maidstone(I've rung them both) are slightly bigger.
On the subject of the bells that rung for the late Queen, I was impressed by the sound of the Sebastopol Bell in St Georges Chapel. It represented a terribly bloody seige between the Russians and British armies that lasted a year in the Crimea War that started in 1854. The war that included the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade.
It is a one ton beast, weighing nearly a ton, one of two taken from a church in Crimea in 1856 . It is only rung on the occasion of the funeral of a member of the Royal Family. It rang 96 times on Monday, obviously once for every year of her life.
An addition bit of historical information is that the Bell inspired the line in the poem by John Donne, which is "For whom the bell tolls / It tolls for thee" This in turn inspired the title of the famous novel by Ernest Hemingway. For the British royal family though, it is quite literal as it does only ring for a Royal who has died.
The Bell certainly rang with a very mournful note, that reaches deep inside the mind. Big Bens bells may be impressive, and in regular use, but that bell is something else and I was delighted from a learning point of view to have heard it.
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Topic: HM Queen Elizabeth ll health (Read 6838 times)