Elizabeth Tower Palace of Westminster London building renovation, Big Ben restoration photos

Elizabeth Tower Palace of Westminster Renovation

17 May 2025

Housing the symbolic bell and timepiece of the nation (Big Ben), the most comprehensive restoration of Elizabeth Tower in 160 years is a masterpiece in conservation and craftsmanship.

Design: architect A.W.N. Pugin
Renewal Design: Purcell

Location: Palace of Westminster, London SW1, England, United Kingdom

Photos courtesy of the Purcell architects office.

Elizabeth Tower by Purcell – a 2025 RIBA London Awards winner

Elizabeth Tower Palace of Westminster Building Renewal, London, UK

Jury citation:

Probably the most iconic building in this year’s RIBA Awards, the Elizabeth Tower is one of London’s most recognisable landmarks and home to the famous Big Ben bell, making it the symbolic timepiece of the nation. Completed in 1859 to architect A.W.N. Pugin’s designs as part of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, the tower has historically been subjected to renovation works every 30 years or so, most recently in the mid-1980s.

Not all of those works have contributed positively to the preservation of its fabric. This latest programme of restoration was planned to rectify previous mistakes and extend the cycle of future repair works. This project is a veritable masterclass in conservation and craftsmanship.

The most comprehensive programme of works in the more than 160 years since the tower was built, it represents an astonishing achievement in upgrading and preserving this monument for the benefit of future generations. Like many conservation projects, appreciating the achievement requires some investigation. The shape of the tower, the clock faces and the sounds of the bells are mostly appreciated from a distance, as a dominant presence within one of the world’s most recognisable skylines.

The jury’s inspection was carried out from within, after entering through a very modest door to one side of the main thoroughfare of MPs and parliamentary staff going about their business. Work led by Purcell at the lower levels included extensive stone repairs, the refurbishment of various interior rooms for exhibitions and admin, and the clever insertion of a passenger lift which must be a welcome addition to the clock engineers and tour guides. Climb to the top of some 350 spiral steps to the tower’s main functions, and the project’s achievements are fully revealed.

Every element of the building fabric and the clock’s workings has been painstakingly examined, researched and assessed, to inform the complex programme of cleaning, repair, redecoration and renewal. Repairs to clock faces and the mechanism have improved the timekeeping accuracy, and the four clock faces have been lifted by replacing 1980s black paint with the original Prussian blue and gold.

Various earlier alterations, some following 1940s bomb damage, have been reversed or replaced with more historically accurate insertions that also better protect interior areas from water ingress from the driving rain prevalent at such height. Monitoring and evaluation systems have been replaced to better manage the environmental conditions, essential for the maintenance of such sensitive timekeeping equipment.

The craftspeople required to deliver such a specialist project were drawn from right across the UK, with only the specialist hand-blown glass for the clock faces required to be sourced from overseas. The preservation of such incredible skill, workmanship and material appreciation for the nation is one of the defining achievements of the project. This went hand in hand with harnessing contemporary technologies and techniques to enable effective project coordination and implementation of more sustainable approaches, to preserve this defining symbol of British heritage for the future.

2025 RIBA London Awards Winners

Purcell

Elizabeth Tower Palace of Westminster building renovation, London images / information received 120525 from the RIBA

Houses of Parliament Shop
Address: 12 Bridge Street, Parliament Square, London SW1A 2JX
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Location: Elizabeth Tower, Palace of Westminster, London SW1A 0AA, England, UK.