A random look at public clocks in Britain, covering those on shops, public buildings, railway stations etc.
The visit to Swindon arose from my earlier trip to Trowbridge. A glimpse of the clock outside the station as my train passed through led to thoughts of never having visited the town. So here we are, back in Wiltshire (although these days Swindon is a separate unitary authority so not technically in the shire county). In Part 1 we will look at the central area of the modern town, saving the Old…
Warminster is a small historic market town in Wiltshire, with a population of 18,000. It was a quick visit on a diversion away from Trowbridges (see earlier posting), so I was only able to capture three clocks. The first is on the Post Office building on Station Road. The bonus clock is the typical Post Office window variety, but not showing the correct time. The second building is the Town Hall…
Trowbridge, population 37,000, is the county town of Wiltshire, although it is now the unitary authority of Wiltshire rather than the county council. So it makes sense to start our visit at County Hall in Bythesea Road (which incidentally is nowhere near being “by the sea”). County Hall was designed by the architect Philip Hepworth and was completed in 1940. The clock is housed on a wooden…
Colwyn Bay is the last in this run of North Wales coastal towns. The first sight of the towm coming out of the railway station is this clock on Station Road. This is the Andrew Fraser Memorial clock, originally installed in September 1989, as set out in the plaque below. It is actually a double memorial clock, as one of the engineers from Joyce clocks was killed during its installation. This is…
Off the North Wales main line at Llandudno Junction and up the branch to Llandudno. As so very often, our first clock sighting is at the railway station. This is the sort of clock I like. It is situated where it is clear to see, is large enough to seen from a distance, and has a simple face - all of which makes the task of telling the time very easy. It also doesn't take much of a detective to…
On a very windy and wet day, Holyhead, on an island off an island off the mainland of Wales, feels like the end of the world. The town grew larger when it bacame a port for ferries to Ireland, a function it still has today. The harbour is the reason for our first clock. Its expansion in 1880 was commemorated by a cast iron clock tower, with its explanatory plaque. The clock was relocated in…
Rhyl can be found on the North Wales coast (but probably only if you are looking), which is an area which I have never explored before. The town is a fairly typical seaside resort, which is clearly well past its original heyday but has some some more recent investment to counter the decline. The size of the railway station shows that the town once catered for large influxes of train passengers.…
Rain and cold, sleet and cold, snow and cold. Not the best weather on my visit to Bradford, and as a result the photos are not of the best quality. Bradford was City of Culture last year, with plenty of the signage and other material still in place. But although it was City of Culture, Bradford is certainly bot City of Clockture, with a very paltry tally of clocks for a settlement of its size…
We are now at the junction of Clarence Street and The Royal Crescent. The owners of the nice houses of the crescent not only look out on a bus station, for which I am sure they are truly delighted, but also to a clock on a column. The old offices of the Cheltenham Gas Company are at the western end of the High Street, and its clock tower is very much a landmark for those approaching the town…
Cheltenham is perhaps best known for its race course and for being the home of GCHQ, but it is now time to put in on the map for its clocks. A high proportion of the clocks are on ecclesiastic or educational establishments, which may or may not say something about the good people of the town. But nevertheless there is a good range of public timepieces to be seen. The order of the clocks in this…
No clock to start with, but we can't investigate Banbury without showing the Banbury Cross of nursery rhyme fame: Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross To see a fine lady upon a white horse With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes She shall have music wherever she goes. There were not many horses, cock, white or otherwise, on my visit, but we do start our clock tour on a road called Horsefair.…
Scarborough is a town I haven't visited for over 40 years, and I soon found out that it was my lost. It is a surprisingly interesting town, and certainly way above some of the run down British seaside resorts. As usual, my arrival my train by a somewhat uncommonly reliable TPE service means that the first port of call is the railway station. The station was opened on 7th July 1845, and it is…
This is the third and final part of our visit to Worcester. This is the former church of St Nicholas on The Cross. Built in 1730 - 35, it became redundant in 1989 and is now a branch of Slug and Lettuce. To it s credit, the new occupier's marks are quite minimal on the facade, helped no doubt by the building's Grade II listing. We first encountered St Swithun's in Part 1, with the restricted view…
Part 1 of our tour of Worcester clocks ended up in the Crowngate Shopping Centre. And we start Part 2 underneath the shopping centre, where the bus station has been shoved out of the way. This is not a pleasant environment to wait for a bus, and gives the impression that Worcester does not care about public transport. In the gloom we can just about make out a token clock. I might have been able to…
Worcester was visited in July 2019 as part of my tour of Henry and Joyce Collins concrete murals. the clocks side of this visit are set out in he order I came across them over a couple of days, and so they are not necessarily in the form of a trail that efficiently visits them all. But randomness is all part of the discovery process. Our first stop is All Saints church on Deansway - which is the…
The Covid 19 lockdown is a good time to catch up with some of the backlog on this blog (so many towns, so many clocks, so little effort on my part to keep up to date). This is Droitwich Spa, visited in July 2019. The reason for many of my visits in 2019 was to see all of the concrete murals created by Henry and Joyce Collins (see my sister blog on concrete murals…
The station at Wemyss Bay is a glorious example of engineering elegance, providing spacious, light and weather protected space for passengers. I have to admit that I only visited because of the station, but luckily it has a clock so it can be included in this blog. The station dates from 1903, although the railway reached here in the 1860's. It is one of only ten 5-star stations in Simon Jenkins'…
In Lockerbie for a meeting on a very wet day. Lockerbie is in the south-west of Scotland, and is a small settlement with a population of about 4,000. Hence my hopes of capturing a hatful of clocks (otherwise known as a clockerbie) were not high. In fact the only clock in sight was on the Town Hall, a splendid creation of 1880. Nothing to do with clocks, but outside the Town Hall is a delightful…
A rare excursion across the border into Wales for todays' posting. The trip to Cwmbran was to see a concrete mural by Henry and Joyce Collins on behalf of my associated blog Concrete Murals (probably an even more niche blog than this one, although the murals are more interesting that you might imagine - if you want to check them out you can find them at concretemurals.blogspot.com) Cwmbran is a…
Dr Foster went to Gloucester, in a shower of rain - I have also paid a visit, but for me the weather was quite good. I didn't get to meet the Tailor of Gloucester, but I did see the clock on the old Co-op building on the corner of Eastgate Street and Brunswick Road. Close by is the entrance to the Eastgate Shopping Centre. This rather grand entrance to a 1970's shopping centre was the original…
To Bath, in glorious sunshine, with not even the hint of a shower ( groan ) As is usual, we start at the railway station. The railway came relatively early to Bath, as part of the legendary Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway. The station dates from 1840. The clock is simplicity itself, with a plain blue face and only the numerals as marks. Being bath, these are of course Roman…
Macclesfield on a bit of a wet and windy day in March. The consolation was a fine set of clocks across the town. Working north-east from the station, our first sighting is this building on a not-too-pedestrian friendly junction. The main road to the left of the picture is called The Silk Road, which conjure sup all sorts of romantic images, none of which pertain to the pollutant-laden intrusive…
Its been a long time. Over a year in fact. I haven't stop visiting towns and the shutter on my camera has been bust, it is just that I haven't got round to writing up the blog. So, here we go again at last, with the same old format but some new towns and clocks. I will start with my latest visits, and gradually try and catch up with the backlog. Hello Warrington. A place which will always remind…
This all started in Piccadilly, central London. Yesterday I was browsing the books in Waterstones, when I saw a picture of a clock in North Harrow in the book Metroburbia ("Metroburbia: The Anatomy of Greater London" by Paul l Knox). A quick trawl of the internet whilst having a cup of tea and apple pie soon tracked the location down, and as it was a nice day, off I went. The nearest station is…
The 18th - 21st January saw Lumiere London (www.visitlondon.com/lumiere) come to town, billed as the UK's largest light festival. With 54 installations around central London, it was certainly something to visit, a view shared (in more ways than one) by the crowds who turned out on Sunday evening after a day of heavy rain. This is a blog about clocks, so I will focus on the illumination of…