BETTER late than never – more than a century after it was first designed by some of York’s greatest architectural minds a clock has been unveiled at an historic East Yorkshire school.

The details for the addition to Brierley Tower, at Pocklington School, were first sketched in 1897 by a leading light of the oldest architectural practice in the country, founded by York’s greatest architect, John Carr.

But the clock was never built – probably because the school authorities at the time could not afford it – and the drawings were lost in time until 2006, when they turned up in the Borthwick Institute at the University of York.

But the school has now marked its 500th birthday by the official unveiling of the clock to staff and pupils in Wilberforce Court by Governor Darrell Buttery.

It ended a saga dating back to late Victorian times, when it was decided to add a large new classroom and dormitory wing and refurbish the main school block.

John Carr’s firm was run by the distinguished architect Walter Brierley, whose painstaking designs even show where desks, beds and washbasins would be placed.

Three drawings of the school’s eye-catching bell tower feature a round-faced clock shown in a square aperture framed by brickwork.

After Friday’s ceremony, the school paraded to All Saints’ Church, Pocklington, for the annual commemoration service.

Head teacher Mark Ronan presented the church with an oak chair decorated with a carving of the central disk of the original school seal.