Back in service

Once again the bells of St Mary-the-Virgin church sound out the hours and the quarters after an absence of several weeks. The problem turned out to be more complicated than was thought. Readers may know that they stopped because a newly installed CCTV cable fouled the shaft that drives the clock hands, catching on the protruding balance arm and becoming more and more tightly wound around it. Eventually even the driving force of the main clock mechanism could not overcome the resistance.

A review by Alex Jeffrey from Cumbria Clocks immediately identified the problem and considered that once the cable was freed (and it is now clipped firmly out of the way) all would be well, and the clock could be restarted. Not quite so! When the pendulum was swung again the clock worked perfectly – but everything was out of sync. When the clock struck three, the hands indicated 11:40 – but even then the minute and hour hands were misaligned so that if the big hand pointed to the twelve, the little hand was about halfway between the hours. It seems that the hands were stopped but the clock was still able to overcome the resistance at first and drive on for three hours or so. The clock in parliament’s Elizabeth Tower appears to have had a similar problem recently, but it does not seem to be related to a failure of modern technology, and anyway it’s not as old as ours (1560 or thereabouts versus 1854) even if its mechanism and quarter strike are a bit more complex (see BBC Future Why is Big Ben falling silent?).

Alex attended again; while he made adjustments (not to be tried by the faint-hearted, as you could get caught in the mechanism) our verger Ben Mason stood outside and relayed the position of the hands. Left hand down a bit… Thank goodness for mobile phones!

A straw poll suggests that those who blessed the peace and quiet while the clock was “off” are but a small minority. The tourists enjoy watching the clock in the ringing chamber as it strikes the hours, but are warned to avoid the bell chamber. “You can try it if you like but you’d far better notter,” as Flanders and Swann once said in their song First and Second Law.

If you want more information about our clock, now considered to be the earliest tower clock in England, a leaflet is available in the church. You can find a detailed analysis of it, together with similar clocks in Salisbury and Wells Cathedrals here.

Image Credits: Andrew Bamji .