London's most famous bell passes test for New Year's Eve celebrations

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London's newly-renovated Big Ben will ring again at midnight on New Year's Eve. Housed in the Elizabeth Tower of the Palace of Westminster in central London, the bell has been mostly silent since August 2017 when major renovations began.

The clock was successfully tested on Sunday in the run-up to New Year's Eve celebrations.

In the past two years, the bell has tolled only for important events, including Remembrance Day on 11 November this year. The UK Parliament's landmark clock tower will mark the start of a year for the first time since its new face was revealed from under scaffolding halfway through restoration work.

Big Ben (right) is housed inside the Elizabeth Tower at the Palace of Westminster, one of the most photographed buildings in the UK; it is surrounded by four smaller bells, including one pictured here on the left (Credit: Victoria Jones/Pool Photo via AP)

The work has seen the 96-metre-tall Elizabeth Tower enveloped in scaffolding as the four clock dials are reglazed, ironwork repainted and intricately carved stonework cleaned and repaired. In March, part of the scaffolding was removed, showing that the clock's once black numerals and hands have been repainted blue. Scientists say this was its original colour.

"This is the first time in the history of the clock it's been taken this far apart," says Paul Roberson, Chairman of the British Watch and Clockmakers Guild and one of those helping fix Big Ben up.

Paul Roberson, Chairman of the British Watch and Clockmakers Guild and one of those helping fix Big Ben up, says the bell is "not like a steam train in a museum, it's still going all the time and doing the job it was supposed to do," after chiming like clockwork for 160 years

"When we took it apart for the first time, we were learning as we went along," he says.

"It was typical of most mechanical items really, there were items we were worried about and when we got them apart, they were OK. Then, there were other areas that we thought were really good and we discovered faults and cracks, so it's always the same with anything mechanical, the things that you're worried about, are ok.”

The three-train clock within the mechanism room, which drives the hands, the hourly chimes, and the quarter-hourly chimes of Big Ben were dismantled and cleaned during the renovation work (Victoria Jones/Pool Photo via AP)

The clock's restoration work is expected to finish in 2021. It will be followed by a £4 billion ($5.2 billion) restoration program of the entire parliament building.

Before restauration works began, the 13.7 metric ton bell had sounded the time almost uninterrupted since 1859.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the new House of Commons Speaker, wants the bell to mark Brexit next year, chiming at the hour the UK leaves the EU on 31 January.

Source(s): Reuters