Clockmaker

For centuries, the township of Gloverstone, while within the City Walls, was outside the jurisdiction of the city authorities and under the protection of the crown. This was because it was part of the Chester Castle encloave reserved for the Crown under the charter of Henry VII. This gave those residing there the freedom to trade within its boundaries, without the requirement to become Freemen of the city. It also provided a home for "foreigners" and, as time passed, it attracted inhabitants from many social classes. Among these, in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century, settled a group of skilled clockmakers. If the Gloverstone itself was a prehistoric standing stone then the location is particularly apt, as people had possibly been figuring out the date here for millenia.

Public Clocks
Chester has many public clocks, the best known probably being those on the Eastgate, the Town Hall, Chester Station and St Peter. Many of these clocks have interesting histories. This article looks at these clocks and the history of clock- and watch-making in Chester. Beginning in 12th century Europe, towns and monasteries built clocks in high towers to strike bells to call the community to prayer. Public clocks played an important timekeeping role in daily life until the 20th century, when accurate watches became cheap enough for ordinary people to afford. Today the time-disseminating functions of these so-called "turret clocks" are not much needed, and they are mainly built and preserved for traditional, decorative, and artistic reasons.



Early clocks were set using a sundial to determine the time of noon, that is, when the sun was at it's highest point in the sky. "Clock" time and sundial time are not the same. Apparent "clock" time, and the sundial, can be ahead (fast) by as much as 16 min 33 s (around 3 November), or behind (slow) by as much as 14 min 6 s (around 11 February). The so-called equation of time has zeros near 15 April, 13 June, 1 September, and 25 December. Ignoring very slow changes in the Earth's orbit and rotation, these events are repeated at the same times every tropical year. However, due to the non-integral number of days in a year, these dates can vary by a day or so from year to year. A further complication arises from longitude: when the sun sets in Chester it is still above the horizon out in the Atlantic ocean. The difference is 4 minutes of time for each degree of longitude. The consequence of this meant that local time in the west of the counrty was significantly different from that at Dover.

The coming of the railways brought a need for uniform national time-keeping. In the early days of the railways timetables included tables to convert local "church clock" time to "railway time". The difference between the two times could lead people to miss trains and at least one privately-funded public clock was built (at Frodsham) to display railway time as opposed to church clock time. For safe-keeping the Frodsham clock was also set three minutes fast. As will be seen below, Chester played an important part in the development of "Railway Time".

Leadworks
Chester Leadworks clock dates from 1801 and is the oldest "existing" public clock in Chester. It was made by Whitehurst of Derby in 1803 and installed on the gable end of one of the Leadworks buildings overlooking the canal. The leadworks ceased operation around 2000 amid environmental concerns: analysis showed that the lead levels in the blood of children living in the area was abnormally high. In 2002 the three foot diameter clock face and it's works were stolen, but within weeks had been returned (although it's current (2020) whereabouts are not clear).

St Peter
The church of St Peter stands by the High Cross on the site of part of the Roman Praetorium and some of its fabric probably dates from that time. A church is said to have been built on this site by Æthelflæd in 907 when the Roman city was refortified by the Mercians. The church clock was at one time provided with "Jacks", animated wooden figures who rang the bell. These were paid for by Robert Amerye, who is otherwise noted for putting on the play "Chester's Prince" in 1610.

Clock "jacks" or "quarter boys" would ring a bell every quarter hour. In many cases this was not the main chiming bell but a separate one. St Peter has a ring of 6 bells, but they are in such a state of disrepair, they are considered unringable. St Peter's have not been rung full circle since before the second world war at least. All 6 bells are still in the tower, and all swing freely. Some clappers are missing, and the wheels that remain are apparently rotting away. The "jacks" can be seen in an illustration of St Peter by Randle Holme dating from just after the Civil War. The term "Jack" was also applied to the clockwork mechanism used to operate a roasting spit. Such a mechanism was described by Chester Bishop and writer John Wilkins in his book "Mathematical Magick" (1648).

The present clock may be that of 1813, and is not particularly reliable (although it is right twice a day). Amery seems to have a minor obsession with bells, as he also provided the bells used as a prize in the eponymous horse-race. Rev Robert Rogers (Archdeacon at Chester) recorded:


 * "In AD 1609, Mr William Lester, mercer, beinge mayor of Chester, one Mr Robert Amerye, ironmonger, sometime sherife of Chester (ad 1608) he, with the assente of the mayor and cittie, at his own coste chiefly as I conceive caused three silver cupps or bells of good value to be made the whiche saide silver cuppes were upon St George's daye for ever to be thus disposed: - all gentlemen that woulde bringe their horses to the Rood dee that daye and there rune that horse which with spede did over rune the reste shoulde have the beste cuppe..."

Chester Station


The clock at Chester Station is offset from its original position above the main entrance. This was done when City Road was laid out as the slight angle of that road concealed the clock from those approachin the station. So far as is known the station was provided with a clock when it first opened in 1848: it appears in illustrations in the guide to Chester produced by Hughes in 1858.

Chester Station played a little known part in the development of time-keeping. Before embarking on any voyage, it was important that a ship’s chronometer should be set accurately to GMT and that any daily drift in its time keeping be known. This could be done by reference to time obtained at a local astronomical observatory equipped with a transit telescope. The procedure would entail either taking the ship’s chronometer to the observatory, or checking with the port authority’s display of a chronometer synchronised to an observatory’s master clock. Many ports provided a time signal each day either by operating a time ball at the quayside or by firing a cannon.

Before the advent of the telegraph, stationmasters adjusted their clocks using tables supplied by the railway company to convert local time to London Time. In turn, train guards set their chronometers against those clocks. The introduction of railway time was in the end swift despite not being straightforward. The Great Western Railway was the first to standardise its timetable on Greenwich Mean Time, in November 1840. One of the most vociferous proponents of standardising time on the railways was Henry Booth, Secretary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, who by January 1846 had ordered the adjustment of clocks to Greenwich Mean Time at both Liverpool and Manchester stations.

In 1857 the Magnetic Telegraph Cmpany (based in Liverpool and associated with the telegraph line which ran from Liverpool to Holyhead through Hilbre Island) acquired the patent of Robert Lewis Jones of Chester for regulating electric clocks. Jones was once a chemical supplier to the Tanning industry in Chester and then the manager at Chester Station. Jones apparently first applied his invention to the clock at Chester Station. This development in horology is described in "ELECTRIC CLOCKS" as follows:


 * "Mr. R. L. Jones, the station master (sic) of Chester, evolved the idea of sympathetic pendulums by simply applying Bain’s electro-magnetic pendulum bob to existing key-wound clocks. His Patent, No. 702, of 1857, claims the obvious advantages of perfect synchronisation, of independent life in case of electrical failure, and small current consumption. He applied it with success to his own turret clock at Chester and to a turret clock in the Victoria Tower in Liverpool. Then Mr. F. James Ritchie, of Edinburgh, took hold of it and supplied many observatories with pairs and triplets of sympathetic pendulums. In 1873, Ritchie carried it a step further. Realising what a very small expenditure of electrical energy was required to keep two tuned pendulums in phase, he was tempted to dispense with the spring or weight-driven maintenance with its merit of independent life, and drove the hands from the pendulum as Bain had done in his earliest earth-driven clocks, but by an improved method which may be described as a reversed gravity escapement."

Jones was most likely driven to develop his clock following the Sutton Tunnel railway accident. He was one of those responsible for filling trains at Chester on a very busy "race day". Unfortunately the trains were overloaded and one of them stalled at the entrance to the tunnel. A second train shunted it into the tunnel, but a third entered the tunnel at speed and there was a collision. The subsequent enquiry raised issues about time-keeping at Chester.

St John's Hospital
The Corporation rebuilt the St John's Hospital (otherwise known as the Bluecoat) complex in 1715–17 with a rear courtyard which included six one-storeyed almshouses for women. The almswomen shared £30 a year under the will of Alderman Joseph Crewe, proved 1801. Mismanagement (see Owen Jones for further examples of this) greatly reduced the value of the hospital's rents; by 1836 they were worth £600 a year (approaching £50,000 in 2015 money), of which only £85 was spent on the almspeople, the rest being carried to the corporation's general account as it had been since c. 1762. An action at law to establish what estates belonged to the hospital and to vest them in the Municipal Charities Trustees was begun in 1838 but not completed until a Chancery Scheme, evidently of 1852, ordered the almshouses to be rebuilt to house 13 paupers who received 10s. a week each. As rebuilt in 1854 by Morris and Hobson for the Trustees of Hospital of St John Baptist, the almshouses each included a sitting room, bedroom, and scullery. A Charity Commission Scheme of 1892 assigned the substantial surplus to pay pensions to other townspeople. Under a Scheme of 1976 the hospital, still supporting 13 almshouses, was absorbed by the Chester Municipal Almshouse Charity, and the almshouses remain in use, the most recent having opened in April 2006.



The Bluecoat has two bells on its roof: the "Galeka Bell", plus the bell inside the bell tower. The bell inside the bell tower was made in 1716 and has been in situ – and chiming on the hour – since 1717. The "Galeka Bell" was salvaged from a WWI hospital ship, SS Galeka. The name of the ship is derived from the Galeka (Gcaleka Xhosa), a people crowded into a narrow drought-stricken coastal strip of South Africa near East London and involved in the "Ninth Frontier War" (1877–79) when "Galekaland was turned into a desolation of burnt-out kraals and empty grain-pits".

She was a 6772 ton steam ship built in 1899 for the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company by Harland and Wolff and had a top speed of 12.5 knots. The ship was launched on 21 October 1899 and completed on 23 December 1899. She was the last vessel to enter service before the merger between the Union and Castle shipping lines in 1900 and transferred to the UC Line while fitting-out. She served on the South Africa route until the First World War. Later she was requisitioned for use as a British troop transport: the 2nd Bn King's Royal Rifle Corps left Southampton on the SS Galeka and arrived at Le Havre on 13th August 1914. Galeka carried troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps to the Gallipoli Campaign, landing the 6th and 7th Bns., Australian Imperial Force, at Anzac Cove on the morning of 25th April 1915. She was then refitted as a hospital ship with accommodation for 366 wounded passengers. When entering Le Havre on 28th October 1916, SS Galeka hit a mine laid by the German U-boat UC-26. Nineteen Royal Army Medical Corps were killed - she was not carrying any patients at the time. The Galeka was beached at Cap Le Hogue, but was a total loss (and Union-Castle's first war casualty).

The Galeka had been owned by Sir Owen Phillips – a major shipowner and MP for Chester (1916-1922). At Phillips request, the bell was eventually brought to Chester and placed atop the Bluecoat building (canal-side corner) in commemoration to those who had fought in WW1. Over one hundred Bluecoat alumni signed up in WW1 and twelve were killed. In 1930 it was revealed that Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (which had adsorbed the Union Castle Line) had previously undisclosed liabilities in excess of £10,000,000. This was enough for the banks to act, and much of Philipps' powers were removed to trustees, although Philipps remained chairman until November 1930. In February 1931 he went to South Africa on holiday, and in his absence it was revealed that for several years the Royal Mail Steam Packet group had been paying dividends to stockholders despite trading at a loss since 1925. On his return from South Africa Philipps was arrested and charged with making false statements with regard to company accounts for 1926 and 1927, contrary to section 84 of the Larceny Act 1861. He was found guilty and subsequently served ten months in Wormwood Scrubs prison before being released in August 1932.

The "spooky" part of this story is that the origins of the bell at St John's had been completely forgotten by modern times. On Friday 28th October 2016 the Building manager decided to inspect the roof of St John's on a whim, and, after reading the name on the bell looked the ship up. It was 100 years to the day since she was sunk.

Steam Mill Street
The prominently marked "Steam Mill" beside the Canal dates from 1834 and was built partly over and partly alongside the original mill, which was the first steam-driven commercial flour mill using Boulton and Watt’s rotative engine in 1786 and predates the often-quoted Albion Flour Mills in London by three months - while work at the Albion Mill had started earlier, the Chester engine was the first to be completed. The Albion Mill in London was later gutted by fire, but the shell of the building was the inspiration for William Blake‘s "dark satanic mills". The interior of the Chester mill was notable for a blown-air seed-transport system upward, and a gravity system downward, which were removed on conversion of the warehouse to offices.



Often missed are the Mill Offices in cobbled Steam Mill Street, a very short distance from the canal. This baroque 1897 building has a central clock in an ornate stone surround (dated 1897). The third part of the mill complex is the surviving part of the original Steam Mill from c1785 whose boilerhouse and engine house have since been demolished. The middle wing facing Steam Mill Street stands in the position of the Steam Mill shown on Weston's map of Chester dated 1789 (engraved by Hunter) and incorporates what may be original cast-iron columns and beams; the 4-storey north wing facing the Chester Canal is probably early C19; the external features of the middle and south wings are probably 1840s. The square internal chimney below roof level survives at the junction of the middle and south wings.

Writing in the 1830's, Hemingway listed the area around Steam Mill Street with his usual snobbishness:


 * "the environs of Frodsham Street, Love Street, Steam Mill Street, Watergate Street, Northgate Street, Commonhall Street, Cuppin Street, Pepper Street, and Lower Bridge Street were all of inferior grade"

He is a little more specific about Steam Mill Street being "not of the most reputable description":


 * "..an opening leading to the canal in the olden time designated Horn lane but now called Steam Mill Street. It is said to have received the former appellation from one or both of its boundary banks having been formed of the hoofs and horns of cattle brought there from the various tanneries with which the neighbourhood abounded; its latter cognomen is derived from a corn mill at the top of the street occupied by the Messrs Frost's who have built on the opposite side of the way an extensive warehouse with which the mill is connected by a stage thrown across from the respective upper stories in each building. In the description of the city in the fourteenth century this was called Chester lane and by Webb somewhat more than two hundred years ago we have it named Starre lane. The houses in this street are in general small and paltry and the neighbourhood not of the most reputable description. A small chapel has lately been erected here used as a place of worship by the Primitive Methodists more generally known by the appellation of Ranters."

Hughes also notes how this was a poor part of town:


 * "Returning to the main street we soon arrive through poverty hunger and dirt at Hoole Lane the corner of which is now embellished with a neat little structure known as the Chester Ragged Schools for the use of those tattered little specimens of humanity ever found about the streets of all populous towns."

Henry Twells Clock
The clock never belonged to Henry Twells. Henry Twells was born in Ashted, Birmingham on March 13th, 1823. Twells at­tend­ed Pe­ter­house Coll­ege, Cam­bridge, and be­came Cur­ate at Berk­ham­sted and Sub-Vic­ar at Strat­ford-on-Avon. In 1856, he be­came head­mas­ter of Go­dolph­in School, Ham­mer­smith, Lon­don. He be­came Vi­car of Walt­ham-on-the-Wolds, Lei­ces­ter­shire, in 1871, and Can­on of Peter­bor­ough in 1884. After re­tir­ing to Bourne­mouth, he helped at St Ste­phen’s, and built and part­ly en­dowed St Au­gus­tine’s Church. He wrote many poems and several hymns. The text of the poem under his clock at the Cathedral is that of his ["Times Paces"] and reads:


 * "When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept. When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled. When I became a full-grown man, time RAN. When older still I daily grew, time FLEW. Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone. O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then? Amen."

This is the original version of the poem, but not the best known. A modified version of the poem was used in a 1952 sermon by Guy Pentreath (1902–1985) in an amended version. Pentreath had probably reconstructed the poem from memory after seeing the clock in the Cathedral. While he made no attempt himself to publicise his version, it somehow was published and was often quoted.

The clock was made in about 1820 and was orignally mounted on a solid wall which ran across the middle of the church. However, the stone wall was replaced with the present wooden screen in the nineteenth century; the clock was kept and a new case built to house the movement. Whoever made the case was certainly no craftsman since it is actually made out of old floorboards, roughly nailed together.

Old TSB Bank
This 1851-3 building is the most happily composed and detailed of James Harrison's designs in Chester. On a corner site, the construction is of tooled sandstone with smooth flush quoins and a grey slate roof. The north-west front to Grosvenor Street has a recessed entrance bay, east, with double carved panelled doors of oak in an arched opening with label-mould and a janitor's window of one cusped light. A well-handled corner clock-turret is faced with blank tracery and crowned with a Tudor octagonal stone belfry cupola.



Chester Savings Bank was one of the first trustee banks to be established in England and Wales. It was set up in 1817, in response to local demand. The Bank’s first home was in the Exchange, in Northgate Street. By the middle of the 19th century, business had grown to the extent that the Bank needed its own self-contained offices. It moved to these purpose-built premises in Grosvenor Street, in 1853. The plans were the result of an 1847 competition which Harrison won. The Bank continued to expand over the next few decades. By the end of the century, it had attracted more than 4,000 depositors. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1904 that allowed savings banks to merge with one another. Chester Savings Bank seized this opportunity, amalgamating with Wrexham Savings Bank in 1906. At that point, Wrexham had been on the brink of collapse. The newly-formed Chester & Wrexham Savings Bank went on to absorb five others before the outbreak of the First World War. The Bank established more branches during the interwar period. Then, after the Second World War, it changed its name to the Chester, Wrexham & North Wales Savings Bank. With the passing of the TSB Act of 1976, and the resultant restructure, Chester became part of TSB of Wales & Border Counties: this paved the way for TSB to be floated on the Stock Exchange ten years later, when it became a fully-fledged plc.

The building housed TSB bank until the 1980s and was briefly known as a Viking Restaurant before being taken over by Chester restaurateur Stephen Wundke in 1992 when he re-opened it as Paparazzi, later known as Pastarazzi Ristorante. Since then it has continued to house a restaurant.

Eastgate
After "Big Ben" (the clock not the bell) the Eastgate clock is believed to be the most photographed clock in England. It was designed by John Douglas and commemorates the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1897). The ironwork was made by Handbridge master-blacksmith James Swindley. The clock was unveiled on the 24th May 1899. J B Joyce & Co, the same company that built it, still exists after a fashion. In 1964, Norman Joyce, the last member of the Joyce family, retired and sold the company to Smith of Derby. Until 1974 a technician from Smith of Derby had to travel to Chester each week to wind it. After souvenir hunters stole the hands of the clock, the city council glazed the clock faces in 1988. Only in 1992 was an electrical mechanism fitted to replace the original wind-up mechanism. In 1996 the clock faces were restored with their original colours.



The cost of the clock dials and mechanism was to a large part met by Edward Evans-Lloyd who contributed £600. Indeed, his name appears on the south face of the clock, which states (on an iron plaque made at Coalbrookdale):


 * “This clock was presented to the City by Edward Evans-Lloyd Citizen & Freeman, 1897.”

The unveiling ceremony was documented in The Chronicle, 24th May 1899. The writer of the article claimed the ceremony was 'singularly dull and uninteresting'. After the ceremony there was a subscription lunch at the Grosvenor Hotel for the Mayor, Councillors and other civic dignitaries. Not many people attended this and the writer also notes that half the Councillors failed to make an appearance at the ceremony.

In 2015 the Eastgate clock was renovated and for that purpose a protective cover was installed. The ingenious cover hiding the scaffolding depicted a photographic image of the bridge and clock and even has working hands to tell the time. The idea was so that "tourists and visitors could still have a snap taken with Chester’s world-famous landmark". It is supposed it was not cheap and the local council carefully supervised the works. Unfortunately the imitation clock face was printed as a mirror image of what it should have been and therefore put on backwards. CW&C Council leader Mike Jones, commented: "That took some time to spot.."

In 2018 the Eastgate clock and the Town Hall clock were illuminated in purple as part of a national campaign recognising "Purple Flag" towns and cities in the UK. Purple Flag status recognises areas that offer an ‘entertaining, diverse, safe and enjoyable night out’ and Chester is one of only 70 towns and cities in the UK to have achieved it.



Town Hall
One often-mentioned feature of the Town Hall is that the clock tower only has a clock on three of the four sides, and that the clock face facing Wales is missing because the inhabitants of Chester "would not give the welsh the time of day" (see "Shoot the Welsh). The Cloth Hall in Ypres (built in 1260, destroyed in WW1 and rebuilt in 1934), upon which the Town Hall is based, also only has a clock face on three sides of the tower - however it houses a carillon with 49 bells.

The Town Hall came close to not having a tower at all. Work began in 1865 and lasted some four years, prolonged by the increasingly strained relations between Corporation and Architect. The principal difficulty was that architect Lynn's scheme cost more than the £16,000 specified by the Corporation, and although the Committee grudgingly accepted a tender of £21,610, it continued to consider various modifications, including leaving out the tower. Eventually, following strident protest by the architect the tower was included.

The actual clock is recent (having only been installed in 1980), as plans for the inital purchase of a clock (originally intended for Woolwich Arsenal) were cut for cost reasons and the discovery that the clock would require an hour of winding each day!

On display in the Mayor's Parlour at the Town Hall is a clock, carved to resemble the west front of Chester Cathedral, it is one of six similar clocks presented to HMS Chester by the citizens of Chester in May 1916.

The "Skelly 'Orse"
A grocer's yard in Princess Street was once home to a curious clock decorated with the skeleton of a horse. This was something of an attraction to race-goers who would visit the site prior to going down to the racecourse in the expectation that it would bring them luck.

Clockmaking in Chester
Chester and nearby Wrexham became important centers for clockmaking by the late 17 century. Wrexham had a long tradition of metalworking and its blacksmiths, gunsmiths, bucklers and needlemakers possessed the metal working skills and the necessary understanding of mathematics and science required to manufacture clocks. The raw materials were easily available: brass for the dials from the foundries of Chester and Warrington and lead for the weights from Minera. Castings for the works could be sourced from the many local foundries. Wrexham and Chester were each a bustling market town, home to a prosperous gentry and a regular haunt of dealers and businessmen from across North Wales. These were the kind of people who wanted the 18th century’s ultimate middle class status symbol - a "long case" clock of their own.

Sources and Links

 * Thomas Hampson: