Secrets behind York's public clocks - by York Civic Trust

AS we all recover from putting the clocks back an hour, that annual chore of remembering and complexities involved in correcting the multitude of devices that regulate our days, just imagine if we had to do this across a whole city.

Since the introduction of British Summer Time in 1916, the guardians of York’s public clocks have sought to keep people on time throughout the year. There are few modern public clocks that automatically update to reflect the changes in British Summer Time.

Public clocks have been a feature in York for nearly 700 years.

In the 1300s, the first public clock in York formed part of the city’s council chambers on Ouse Bridge. It regulated the day for the whole city, setting the time when people could trade at the city’s markets and the start of council meetings and court proceedings. (The clock was replaced in the 1500s and, when the present Ouse Bridge was built in 1810, this ‘new’ mechanism was repurposed in Hull and can now be seen in North Lincolnshire Museum in Scunthorpe.)

Standing on Ouse Bridge today, looking towards Coney Street, you can see the oldest surviving public clock in the city - the painted clock face high up on the wall of the Spurriergate Centre (St Michael’s Church).

St Michael's Spurriergate Clock - York's oldest public clock

Originally painted in the late 18th century and moved to its current location when the church tower was removed in 1960s. The clock has informed travellers of the time for over 300 years. The clock mechanism was updated in 1896 by York’s premier clockmaker, George JF Newey, who was also responsible for clocks on Coney Street, George Hudson Street and De Grey House in St Leonard’s Place, among many others.

York is rich in public clocks with over 17 examples in the city centre alone. The majority of people now look to their phones, wrists or ears to find out the time. Yet our public clocks fulfil a valuable role in setting the character and ambience of our society. The little Admiral on top of the clock in at St Martin le Grand’s church on Coney Street is perhaps one of the most photographed statues in the city.

Little Admiral on top of the St Martin le Grand clock in Coney Street, one of the city's best-known and loved public clocks

However, it is a difficult job maintaining the city’s public clocks. How many times have you looked up and noticed, somewhat annoyingly, that one of the city’s clocks seems to be telling the wrong time? You might suspect that a historic city like York would have a city official with a quaint title, something like the Timemaster or Keeper of the Clocks - but alas no.

Today the majority of the city’s largest and most prominent clocks are set and maintained by the amazing yet small group of volunteers of the York Clock Group. Reaching many of these turret clocks, as they are known, involves running the gauntlet of ladders, pigeons and inaccessible spaces. Sometimes it is just not possible to reach a clock and so time stands still or is out of step with the seasons of the year. On this particular occasion nothing to do with climate change.

For travellers who came to York before November 1840 this would not have been too unusual because there was not a standard time across Britain – local time ruled. Local time was set by the sun and with no means of communication faster than a horse or pigeon this did not really matter. The development of the railways and the electric telegraph greatly sped up communications between towns and cities and local time variations became a problem.

In 1852 cutting edge electric telegraph equipment was installed at the Royal Observatory Greenwich which could transmit accurate time signals throughout the country. Within three years nearly all public clocks were set to ‘railway time’ displayed on station clocks adjusted regularly to the signals set from Greenwich.

In our global digital world today, time is mostly set according to Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC), making the old ways of localised time feel very parochial.

So, when you look up at York’s rich array of public clocks, as tens of millions of people have done before, just consider their history and the work that goes into maintaining them and that they might not be telling the wrong time – just another form of time.

Andrew Morrison is the Chief Executive Officer of York Civic Trust