Although it’s still doing what it should, telling us the time, it’s in need of a spot of timely TLC.
The internal works need an overhaul but, perhaps above all else, the clock also needs a complete ‘facelift’.
It looks dirty and wholly unbefitting on such an iconic and historic building as Winchester Cathedral.
There lies one of the mysteries, though. The colouring of the clock face now presents itself as a dirty brown and it set the cathedral’s works department wondering what the colour was in the past.
Although archive records exist detailing all the work carried out, inside and outside the cathedral for centuries, there’s no mention anywhere of the colour of the paint used on the clock face.
There are countless photographs of the tower and its clock but they’re mostly black and white.
An image in a 1970s guide book, however, does indicate it was light blue around that time. But was it blue before that? Or, indeed, subsequently?
The 1985 edition of the Friends of the Cathedral Record reported that “through the generosity of Canon Charles Wells the face of the cathedral clock was repainted and regilded in memory of his wife.”
Again, no mention of colour. Was it once black, perhaps, with gilded numerals or even ‘Ox Blood Red’ – shades which are all currently being considered by the cathedral authorities.
Another mystery is why an important clock in the city, hundreds of years old, is only visible on one side of the tower – the south side which faces The Close, not the city itself.
The suggestion is that in the 17th and 18th century, ordinary Winchester workers were not to be reminded by a large clock how many hours they’d worked.
Only those living in the Cathedral Close needed to know the time.
The working parts of the clock were clearly put together by the famous clockmakers Aynsworth Thwaites of Clerkenwell, London – there’s an engraved plate which says so.
But the then cathedral blacksmith, one Mr John Early, must also have had a major part to play in the construction and installation of the timepiece during the 1770s.
Notes in an accounting book, under the heading ‘Repairs of the Church’, reveal that Mr Early was paid £79-13 shillings “on account of the new clock in full of his bill”, a figure which would be in the region of £16,000 in today’s values.
A hundred years ago in 1925, a London horologist, Percy Webster, was asked to assess the condition of the Winchester clock.
He reported: “I do not consider it unduly worn after nearly 150 years of wear and if re-bushed in the near future, there is no reason why it should not be used indefinitely.”
However, while acknowledging the cathedral’s love of its special timepiece, he wasn’t exactly its greatest admirer: “I find this clock to have been … entirely reconstructed in accordance with the engraved plate by Aynsworth Thwaites in 1777.
“Of course, it does not fulfil the requirements of a modern standard time-keeper for a town the importance of Winchester but it is undoubtedly of great interest to preserve it, as far as possible untouched, in your wonderful old cathedral.”
A century on, work will soon begin on the thorough overhaul of the inner workings of the clock in addition to a face-washing and repainting of the dial. The colour? To be decided!
