The time of the day was once a fierce issue in Christchurch

Press, 26 November 1982, Page 18

The time of the day was once a fierce issue in Christchurch

By

DR ERIC PAWSON,

geography

department, University of Canterbury

Our lives are often ruled by the clock. We go to meetings at specific times, watch television programmes at set hours, and sit exams for which we may not be late. Clocks abound in homes and offices, and most people have watches. To make sure we don’t get “out of time," the radio stations give regular “time checks.” In the past it was less necessary to be precise. Thomas Hardy’s Tess "started on her way up the dark and crooked lane. . . a

street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently divided the day.” Before one-handed clocks, the sundial was the most accurate purveyor of time. But even when clocks became more sophisticated, it was not always possible for everyone to tell the time accurately. The story of time- keeping in nineteenth century Christchurch illustrates the problems people had. Benjamin Mountfort, the

architect of the Provincial Council Buildings, thought it necessary to have an accurate clock on public display in the early city. His various sketch plans of the buildings show a clock tower as part of the design. In 1859, the' Provincial Council ordered a clock and ornate ironwork tower from England for this purpose. It was to be erected adjacent to the first wooden Council chamber, prominently visible across the Avon. The tower was “put up at considerable expense on its

arrival, as a. child puts up a new toy,” said “The Press.” However, it was considered “unsightly” by some Council members. The clock was not inserted, and in November, 1861, it was instead installed temporarily in the stone tower of the Council Buildings facing Armagh Street. The clock could not be seen outwardly, but its chimes, according to “The Press” in 1864 “can be heard over about a mile and a half or two miles of the adjacent neighbourhood.” On calm days, presumably!

The iron clock tower was taken down in June, 1863. “There appears to exist an insuperable dislike on the part of our rulers to anything like ornamental design in building,” complained “The Press.” "A clock tower is greatly needed in Christchurch.” Mountfort, however, did not give. up. He produced a plan for a handsome Gothic stone base for the iron tower, when he was commissioned to design the second stage of the Provincial Council Buildings. Although his great stone Council Chamber on Durham Street, finished in 1865, put the lie to the Council’s averred “insuperable dislike” of ornamental design, the clock tower was not built.

Mountfort subsequently produced a drawing for a new Canterbury Museum, of two wings with the clock tower in the centre. This also came to nothing. At some stage, the tower was taken to the Christchurch Municipal Yard on Oxford Terrace — where the Scott statue now stands — and there it rusted until the end of the century. It is not clear how long the clock itself remained in the Armagh Street tower. But early in 1864, the city council erected a belfry, 20 feet high, in the Council yard. The bell was rung morning, midday, and evening “to enforce greater regularity amongst the workmen of the Council.”

In the late 1860 s, this belfry was moved to Market Square, now Victoria Square, raised in height, and used also as a fire alarm.

So local people who had pocket watches could reset them by the regular tolling of this bell. Those who did not have watches had to rely on one of the many of the bells — church bells to summon the faithful, school bells to alert the reluctant. Some workshops, and factories, just as today, used hooters. But without a visible public clock, it was hardly surprising that “the time” varied greatly across- the city. When Samuel Butler raced his neighbour across the plains to register his claim at the Christchurch Land Office, he arrived to find the doors open at twenty to ten, and his neighbour’s name illicitly entered half an hour since, despite the official opening hour being ten o’clock.

Whose time was wrong, we do not know, but Butler won his case and was awarded his claim.

The same problem was evident in Lyttelton. “You find in going into the different public and private offices along Norwich quay everyone with a different time,” said “The Press” in July, 1865. A week later, a “public servant” responded with a letter, “as one of the sufferers,” suggesting the revival of “the old system of firing a signal gun at twelve o’clock on Saturdays, together with the hoisting of a black ball on the Government flagstaff, five minutes before firing, to give timely notice.

“Some years ago,” he went on, “this service, though imperfectly rendered, proved a great boon to the inhabitants of this town.”

In June, 1867, the problem was partially solved when the colonial government’s new telegraph department

provided clocks inside its Lyttelton and Christchurch offices. “In future there will be no difficulty in ascertaining the correct time,” said “The Press.” If you were prepared to walk to the telegraph office! The City Council remained dissatisfied. In August, 1879, it asked the Premier, Sir George Grey, if he would hand over the original provincial council clock and tower, which had become colonial government property when the provincial councils had been abolished three years earlier. The Council wished to erect it “in the eastern portion of the city where a public clock is much wanted.”

Once again nothing happened. No doubt this was because the Council put a price of six hundred pounds on the cost of erecting the tower on a suitable base, the money to be raised by public subscription. And anyway, the problem of telling the time had become less urgent. In 1879, the new government buildings, containing the post and telegraph offices, were finished in Cathedral Square. A clock .and bell were inserted in the tower on top of its roof. As the new post office was the largest building in the vicinity, apart from the rising Cathedral, the clock could be seen and heard over some distance. It became “the official time-keeper for the City.”

This clock was set to New Zealand Mean Time, transmitted by telegraph for the government observatory in Wellington. “Mean time” was a uniform time sent across the whole country by telegraph, and differed from the local time of each place, taken, from the sun. That, however, is another story. The original clock tower did not finally assume its intended purpose until 1897, vhr " erected at the

when it was erected at the junction of Lichfield, Manchester and High. Streets to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The cost was generated in equal measure — five hundred pounds each — by the public and the council. It was mounted on a substantial base of local stone.

By then, the post office clock was no longer visible in the eastern part of the city as new buildings obscured it. So the tower, complete with the original clock, which had been sent “Home” for renovation, fulfilled a valuable function.

However, neither it, nor the post office clock, maintained a reputation for reliability. Complaints of missed trams and trains were frequent. When the clock tower was moved to its present site in Victoria Street in 1930, as it was becoming a traffic obstruction, the clock was replaced.

So the problem of providing a time standard by which everyone could agree was not really resolved until the radio time checks that we now take for granted were introduced in the late 19205.

Ready for the Jubilee