But it was not such an exhilarating experience for Australia's Oscar Piastri, the McLaren driver finishing seventh, a place behind teammate and world champion Lando Norris.
Piastri said: "Not quite the finishing we wanted to be, very very close once again but we improved from practice at least. We'll try our best tomorrow, see what we can do and hopefully make the car a bit quicker."
Ferrari's Hamilton rose brilliantly to the occasion in front of his adoring home crowd to see off Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli by just 0.011 seconds.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen will line up from third for Saturday's 17-lap dash to the chequered flag, one place ahead of Hamilton's team-mate Charles Leclerlc. George Russell finished a disappointing fifth.
Hamilton insists he is not thinking about winning a record eighth world crown, but his performance here will do little to dampen a growing feeling that he is in the hunt for this year's title.
Hamilton, 46 points behind Antonelli in the title race, said: "We didn't expect coming to Silverstone that we'd be competing for the front row, we really, really didn't. So, this is an amazing surprise. I'm ecstatic."
The 16,000 fans crammed into the 'Landostand' named after the world champion held their breath between Q2 and Q3 as Norris' mechanics worked frantically on the front end of his McLaren.
Norris had only just scraped into the final phase of qualifying after he finished 10th in Q2. Norris' car was fit to take part in the concluding running, but the Englishman was off the pace.
McLaren earlier revealed that they are waiting on Mercedes' latest engine upgrade to push them closer to the front. It could arrive in time for this month's Belgian Grand Prix.
McLaren boss Zak Brown said: "We have some work to do. We'll catch up. I think we'll be winning races this year, so I'm quite optimistic for the future."
Piastri and Norris's cars have switched livery from the usual luminous 'papaya' orange to white with a green stripe for British GP weekend.
It is a design copied from the first McLaren Formula 1 car, the M2B of 1966, in a year when the team mark their 1,000th race.
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