Chester-le-Street

My visit to Chester-le-Street was in driving rain which made for a bleak experience. I therefore apologise to the good residents of this town that it does not present a particular good picture, and probably misses a whole load of clocks (it was just too wet to bother go looking beyond the main streets in the town centre.

So all we have is two churches and a civic centre. The first is the Methodist church:

Hurrah for a church clock that has Arabic numerals.

Our second church is St Mary and St Cuthbert, founded in AD883, with a spire reaching to a height if 158 feet.

And this is the Civic Centre, with its large minimalist clock. Bit of a tacky building, but the clock fits in well with the overall design.

Seaton Carew

Seaton Carew is a seaside resort to the south of Hartlepool. Personally I just love the name. Apparently it comes from Carou, the name of a Norman French family who owned land in the area.

The settlement was originally a fishing village, but it became a seaside resort in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Other than the pleasing name, the only reason for visiting Seaton Carew is to see its clock tower at the bus station. This is a marvellous art deco creation, with a long curving shelter and a central tower.

Ok, there are a few rust stains on the clock face, but it still looks good.

The bus station was built in 1938, and is now quite rightly Grade II listed.

What else is there in Seaton Carew? Well the Destination Hartlepool website says that "rain or shine Seaton Carew is well worth a visit, even on a wintry day fish and chips sat in the car watching the raging North Sea is a pleasure to behold." I would dispute that. It was a wet and blustery day, and as a consequence a bleak place to me.

And the view down the coastline is this:

We are not talking picture postcard territory are we? But this blog is about clocks rather than a critique of towns, so let's go hunting.

The only other clock that I could find was that on Holy Trinity church.

 

So, go to Seaton Carew on a calm sunny day and marvel at the bus station. Just don't expect much else from the town, except for fish and chips.

Open Garden Squares Weekend

This weekend was the annual Open Garden Squares event in London organised by the London Parks and Gardens Trust. Over the course of the weekend 219 gardens were opened up to the public. As well as the opportunity to see an amazing range of often private and hidden gardens, it also allows viewing of a number of clocks. Here are three from today:

First, is BMA House on Upper Woburn Place, home of the British Medical Association.

The next two clocks are in Middle Temple, part of the huge historic legal quarter in central London.

Durham

Durham - a place often seen from the train with the cathedral dominant over town, but one never visited before. I was looking forward to my visit.

Well, you know how some places just don't gel with you when you arrive there? Somehow you just can't get a feel for how the place works. Durham was like that for me. Perhaps it is because it is all ups and downs - literally, because the city centre is built on a high promontory in a bend in the river.

It doesn't help when the first clock spotted is on the unfriendly outward facing walls of a shopping centre, in this case The Gates - sorry the Gates.

In the market square is the church of St Nicholas, dating from 1858.

I'm not sure why, but its clock face is protected by a thick wire mesh, obscuring the view of the clock, especially in bright sunlight.

Away from the sunlight, the inside of the market hall has two stall-based clocks. In other towns I often don't include these non-permanent clocks, but as you will see there are very few others to spot in Durham.

The only shop-based clock I could find was this one on Bramwells jewellers on Elvet Bridge.

The next stop is the tower atop the Law Courts building.

And round the corner is the university cricket ground, and the clock on the pavilion.

Durham cathedral, or rather the guardians of said building, does not allow photography. So I can't show you the splendid clock inside. Shame, but there you are.

The final stop is the former Durham Miners Hall.

 

And hurrah, it is now time to leave Durham.

Newcastle - revisited

I surveyed the public clocks of Newcastle in six postings in June / July 2013. As usual, especially in large cities, there were some that I missed - so here they are. I'm sure that there are others still out there that remain undiscovered by my intrepid camera, so if you know of any please let me know.

Let's start at the end - Wallsend to be precise, which marks the end of, well, the wall - Hadrian's Wall.

The building is Wallsend Town Hall, a Grade II listed building completed in 1908, and still used by the local authority. Which is more than can be said for the stylish modern library building just around the corner, now lying scandalously empty.

The clock is by Potts, with drum made by Jones & Willis Ltd or Hornsey, and was set going on 16 September 1908. [As so often, thanks to the book "Potts of Leeds" by Michael S. Potts].

A bit further downriver is the Maritime Chambers building of 1806/07 in North Shields.

Details of the building can be found on this plaque:

Down by the river itself we find the Fish Quay. The area has been in the business of landing fish since 1225, and was once the biggest kipper producer in the UK. Now it is the home to two clocks, the first being this cuboid on Vita House:

 

And from here you can see the huge clock on the Knott Memorial Flats, covered in my posting of 9 July 2013.

 

 

The second one is on the Dock Master's House.

 

And looking up the cliff edge running up from the river, is this tall white building with a clock in its upper window. Must rather obscure the view from inside.

 

Time now to mix song titles to give Fog on the Mersey and Ferry Across the Tyne. For the easiest way to reach our next destination is to take the Shields Ferry across the Tyne from North Shields to South Shields. The ferry can be seen in the photo below - the little boat to the left, rather than the somewhat larger North Sea ferry.

 

And if you take the ferry, please note that as you look back through the drizzly gloom to the north bank, the circular object on this derelict pub is actually a Newcastle Breweries sign, and not a clock as I found to my cost retracing my steps in heavy rain and negotiating a demolition and regeneration site (with lots of dead-end roads) a few days later.

 

Back to real clocks. This next building is South Tyneside Law Courts.

 

Just behind the Law Courts is this unidentified building, which I assume is some form of retail outlet.

 

At the junction of Commercial Road and West Holborn is this huge building. I believe this used to be Redheads Shipyard, which means that the clock is a 1945 example from Potts.

 

Let's get well away from the river, and take a trip to the airport. Newcastle airport was originally opened on 26 July 1935 and, although certainly nowhere the largest in the country, handles 4 - 5 million passengers per year.

The international arrivals hall is graced by this compass inspired clock.

At the other end of the same building is the domestic arrivals hall. Here there is a more subtle, but in my view more effective, design.

The clock was unveiled to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. It is made out of brushed steel  by Smith of Derby.

Alighting from the metro at Kingston Park on the way back from the airport, you have the chance to visit a delightful out-of-town retail park (aka a sea of car parks and pedestrian un-friendly roads surrounding very large sheds with chain stores in them).

The only slight (and it is very slight indeed) redeeming feature is the clock on top of the Poundland store (probably the only time that the phrases 'redeeming feature' and 'Poundland store' have ever been used in the same sentence).

And what on earth is this all about? A clock tower (bog-standard off-the-shelf modern design) nestled on some form of steel framework tower, itself sitting on a tower. Some form of metaphor for the modern shopping reality of piling unnecessary things upon even more unnecessary things to create something that is of no real use and certainly is not a thing of beauty, but exists because it can and someone was bereft of enough intelligence to fund it? To me it reminds me of the upper stages of a space rocket. Poundland we have a problem.

Closer inspection of the clock faces also reveals that this edifice also lacks in functionality.

To be fair to Poundland, you wouldn't really expect architecture on one of its stores. As for some of the other so-called more upmarket stores that surround it, well you didn't even try did you?

The Discovery Museum is housed in the old Co-operative Wholesale Society warehouses and offices of 1897 - 99. Don't do what I did and turn up only 30 minutes before closing time as there is a lot worth seeing. And apart form all the exhibits, there is also the Great Hall on the fourth floor.