The last weekend in October is clocks change here in the UK with a one hour shift back to GMT. For those that remember to do it, this delivers an extra hour in bed but it is a pain to change traditional clocks one hour back. This is even more so with Turret Clocks such as those on churches and ancient buildings. The easiest solution is to stop the mechanism on Sunday and come back to it on Monday one hour earlier to restart it. While this is the easiest method it does upset these ancient mechanisms that have just had 6 months of stable running. The alternative is to wind the mechanism forward 11 hours and drive those in earshot scatty with all the bell chimes one after another.
I was very fortunate to be invited by David Pawley to help him reset some of the clocks on his maintenance list and one in particular impressed me. This is the Memorial Clock at Reading University. The clock tower was built circa 1920 as a memorial clock to all those associated with Reading University that had not returned from the Great War. There are some 101 names recorded from WW1 and further names from WW2 and latterly from Afghanistan. It is a beautiful clock and a fitting memorial. The only sad aspect was that its enormous bell is muted these days so as not to disturb patients at the neighbouring Royal Berks hospital.
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