St Ives in Cambridgeshire |
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This is the side of the clock which is farthest from the stairs, but I’ve called it the front of the clock. It has a little face which shows the time (if you’re inside and cannot see the face of the clock). It also has the makers name, Smith & Sons Clerkenwell there.
If you look carefully, you can see that this little clock face actually turns backwards!
The wooden vertical is the top of the pendulum. Although part of the pendulum support is wood, some of it is metal, and it varies in length according to the temperature. Ian has to reset the time and constantly adjust the speed of the clock running by turning a nut on the pendulum. Otherwise it would speed up in the winter and slow down in the summer.
The wooden vertical in that picture goes down through the floor to the pendulum, which has a wooden box arrangement around it on the next floor down, the bell tower.
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There are lots of places on the web to find out about the workings of clocks, but I happened to have to hand a picture which shows some of the same parts of a grandfather clock (they were broken by someone clumsily moving this old clock!).
Clocks (and watches) normally run at an exact number of seconds of swing. Because of the length of the pendulum, this clock runs exceptionally slowly, I timed it at (I think) 3 seconds per swing.
Here’s a picture of Ian Angus and John Vincent just after we’d reached the clock tower, they’re pondering over the electrics and how to get some extra lights on. At least there are lights, and the stairs are less rickety than they were. A lot of work was done by the Town Council in 1997 under the Mayor of the time, John Davies, to make it safer to get to the top. There used to be a great mess left by pigeons, but blessedly, the tower has been bird-proofed.
Winding the Clock
Until about 1970, the clock was wound by hand. Ian took over in 1997, but his predecessor had to climb the stairs every week, get out the enormous handle and spend half an hour or so turning it. The weights were very heavy, in fact they still are, around a hundredweight or so. The handle for this job is still there, and you can see where all the winding mechanism used to be, but electric motors now do the job.
Because the clock had to run for a week between windings, the weights were on very long wires which dangled down through the floor into the bell room below. There’s no longer any need for that, the electric motors kick in every half an hour or so, and the weights only rise and fall a few inches each time.
The new mechanisms (one for the clock running and one for the chimes) are on either side of the clock mechanism. The great winding drums which used to be dominate the underside of the clock are gone (very sadly), and replaced by sprockets. Chains come out through the side panels and the pull of the weights turns the shafts inside the clock, as before.
When the weights have gone down a short distance, a little bulb called a mercury switch is operated. It’s under the circular green cover on the left. When the electric motor has kicked in and wound the weights up a few inches, the mercury switch tilts the other way and cuts off the power again. Just in case this elegant and practically foolproof system fails, there is another switch operated by a bar which the weights lift if they climb too high.
Another mechanism operates the hands on 4 sides of the clock.
| Sitting on top of the clock is another mechanism which drives each of the 4 clock faces. It’s not easy to see, because it, too, is glassed in, and these covers don’t come off as easily. A rod runs in each direction, this turns the clock hands, and gears at each face turn the hour hand at 1/60th the speed. In the old days, pigeons used to sit on the rods, it was very funny to see them, since they were constantly being tipped slowly off, and had to keep shuffling their feet. (A bit like the swallows on telephone wires, who tell each other that the long words tickle their feet!). |
The 4 minute hands of the clock are about 2 feet 9 inches long, and the hour hands about 2 feet long. They’re not flimsy little sticks as you have on a watch, because they must be strong enough to resist the wind, birds roosting on them etc. So they have to be counter-balanced, and you can see the weights on the inside of each clock-face.
If you look at the clock at night, you’ll see that only the front face is lit up. The clock tower needed some light inside, and the 4th face is actually a window. Nowadays, with the modern invention of electricity and so forth it’s not only possible to wind the clock automatically, but lights have been put up inside, and this is what illuminates the face.
The 4 faces of the clock each show a slightly different time, but the other three faces are not visible from inside, so it’s difficult to fix it. Worse than that, the chime doesn’t happen at the exact time that the minute hand reaches the hour. There is a travelling clock service man who calls twice a year, but he’s not got round to fixing that as yet. There are some other dark secrets about the way the clock keeps time, but you’ll need to speak nicely to Ian to find out what they are. My lips are sealed.
But one secret of the clock man is evident for all to see:
We are indebted to Ian Angus for his time on Saturday 26th January 2002 allowing us to climb all over "his" clock and to Keith Clarke the Church Secretary for his hospitality. So after the long climb down to ground level we dropped in to Tookey's Coffee Bar in the Church for some refreshment
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Page last updated 22/08/08 Copyright 2001-2008© JevStar.Com (JevStar™) |
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