A FAMOUS CLOCK

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 127, 25 November 1935, Page 9

A FAMOUS CLOCK

ACT OF RESTORATION

FLEET STREET CURIOSITY

[From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, October 26.

For some weeks groups of interested

people will be assembling opposite the s church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, in Fleet Street, to hear—and indeed, to see—a quaint clock strike. It is a clock that has come back to Fleet

Street after an absence of 105 years,

Its early history is associated with s the London of Charles 11. The old1 church escaped the Great' Fire, and possibly as.a thanks offering the, parishioners decided to erect a hand-1 some clock. Thomas Harrys, clock-' maker, of Water Lane, Blackfriars f submitted a statement of what he pro-posed-to do. There were to be "two figures of men with poleaxes to strike the quarters. I will do one thing more which London shall not know the like; I will make two hands show the hours and minutes without the church, upon a double dial which will be worth your observation, and to mv credit." I , • So the clock was erected and the clockmaker was ■ paid £35 for his masterpiece. In 1829 the old church was pulled down and many of its effects were sold. The clock and the figures, of King Lud and his sons were purchased by the Marquess of Hertford for 200 guineas. The news of the passing of the clock and the Jacks caused- Charles Lamb to shed tears Tor years these relics rusticated within the grounds of St. Dunstan's Villa, Regent's Park, where the clock was wound up regularly and the pent house and the savages received fresh i coats of .paint. When Viscount Eothermere camel into possession of the house he re-! solved to'restore the famous clock to the place where multitudes of Londoners, dead and gone, had daily gazed on .it. Today, it is to be seen by all who pass up and down Fleet Street. There is a pent house resting on the top of one of the porches of the church. The door is about 10 feet high, and inside, each standing beside a bell, are to be seen the models of two savages clad only in loin skins. Each.holds a club, the end of which falls on the edge of a bell. Now they are clean and brightly .coloured as on the day Thomas Harrys fashioned them 264 years ago. THE GIANTS' TASK. ; At the quarters the heads of the giants shake . vigorously, their right arms are raised, and they strike the I bells wiM^ their clubs. If it is the hour a hammer at the back of one of -the bells strikes according to the number of 'the hour, after the giants have tolled the introductory chime. The clock itself, how a simple cylinder of metal, is attached to the end of an oak beam which protrudes from the wall below the pent house, and the hands of the clock tell the minutes and the hours on two opposite faces. The clock today is the same as it originally was, with the exception of <the case and the carved bracket of Father Time, which was altered in 1738. Apparently Father Time was too weak to sustain the heavy beam. In consequence he was deprived of his head, which was placed on a jack leg behind the school supporting the bracket. This cost the parish £110. The clock, now circular, was originally framed with a square, ornamented case finished with a semi-circular pediment. In-front of the case facing the street was- a' BtanjiJirig figure ' similar^b; the - fat boy of Panyer Alley. The alcove containing the two Jacks is exactly as designed in 1671. The original clockworks made by. Thomas Harrys in 1671 , have been overhauled and left iperfect. : The statues of King Lud and his two sons, Androges and Theomantius, now stand within (the entrance to the vestry. It was due to the care of Sir I'rancis Gosling'that these statues, as well as that of Queen Elizabeth, were saved from destruction;,, when Ludgate was taken down together with Other, gates of the city. ...,

Mr.-Cecil, Harmsworth, brother pf Lord Rothermere, unveiled the clock! and. in the course of a special service within St. Dunstan Church, said:— "It must have been as familiar to Dr. Johnson as the Mitre Tavern or Temple Bar itself. But there was less care, , a hundred years ago, for ..the antiquities of. London than, happily, I there is today."

It was Lord Rothermere's hope that the clock would for generations to come "constitute an object of historic interest and picturesque attraction to the people of London, and particularly to those whose work brings them day by day into closest association with Fleet Street." ,