|

Edward Garnier at the Speaker's reception to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Big Ben and the Great Clock

2 June 2009

This evening we are here, thanks to you, Mr Speaker, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a Clock and a Bell that are known the world over. It is also a pleasure for me and my 4th cousin, or "my noble kinsman", Teddy Beckett, the 5th and present Lord Grimthorpe, to have been invited as the great-great-great-great nephews of Edmund Beckett Denison, the 1st Lord Grimthorpe, who designed the clock and the bell, to be here to join in these celebrations. Teddy Grimthorpe is descended from E. B. Denison's brother and I am descended from his sister.

There can be few people who have heard of London who do not also know about Big Ben through hearing the sonorous bongs that are broadcast daily on the BBC. To see a post card of the Clock Tower is to see London and even Britain in one picture through the reputation of one building.

The are no doubt several British families with long connections with politics and the Palace of Westminster and some of those families are famous for their service to the country and private and public achievements - and deservedly so. Obvious examples include the Cecil and Cavendish families and many of you will be able to think of others. There are though some less well known families that have played their part in the political history of this country and its institutions including this House of Commons.

One such, if I may say so without too much immodesty, is Teddy's and my own. The first MP from my family on my mother's side, Thomas de Grey, entered the Commons in 1546, Henry Vlll's last parliament. He was reluctant to come and happy to leave but it was his turn to risk his life and fortune in the dangerous world of Tudor politics. There have been several Becketts, de Greys, Bethells and Garniers and others from our family since then in Parliament and although I am the latest, I hope I will not be the last. Incidentally, in 1849 my great-great grandfather, Thomas Garnier, was appointed Chaplain to the Speaker and the House of Commons.

It may interest you, Mr Speaker, to know that Thomas de Grey's son, Robert the Recusant, was imprisoned in Norwich Castle by the agents of Queen Elizabeth for refusing to give up his Roman Catholic faith – however he soon changed his mind when the Government started chopping down his oaks and carting off the wood.

This streak of stubbornness was also to be found in Edmund Beckett Denison, the MP who designed the great clock and the bell. He was unquestionably a difficult and a controversial man but, I think, a brilliant and determined man. A gifted mathematician, a highly successful QC, an engineer, locksmith, clockmaker and horologist, a church builder and restorer and amateur architect, a businessman, landowner and member of both Houses of Parliament; and a prolific writer on clocks, architecture and abstruse religious subjects. His first published work was entitled "Six letters on Dr Todd's Discourse on the Prophecies Relating to Antichrist in the Apolcaplyse." It must have been a real page-turner.

He also was known for writing a vast number of letters to the Times. To quote his biographer, Peter Ferriday, "He had an unequalled knack of bringing out the worst in his fellow men. His own letters to the press were brutish, bullying and libellous... He believed in speaking out, and if anyone disagreed with him the only inference to be drawn was that man was either an idiot, an habitual liar, or had been bribed." He applied this robust attitude to his dealings with Sir Charles Barry and anyone else who had or thought they had a proper interest in the clock tower and its contents. One recipient of his letters wrote, "The tone of Mr Denison's last letter relieves me from the task of continuing to notice his remarks."

Despite his reputation for rudeness and belief in his own genius, both of which were to a large part justified, he has, with others, left us with a truly magnificent clock which still after 150 years, and thanks to the dedication and care of those who have and continue to look after this great but delicate machine, keeps time to within one second's accuracy, and a bell, Big Ben, that booms out hourly above us and around the world. This was a man who can truly be described as a polymath, a Victorian renaissance man but he also someone who believed he possessed the Englishman's right to do what he likes.

We live in different times but thanks to him we can measure its advance second by second.