Rhyl

Rhyl can be found on the North Wales coast (but probably only if you are looking), which is an area which I have never explored before. The town is a fairly typical seaside resort, which is clearly well past its original heyday but has some some more recent investment to counter the decline. The size of the railway station shows that the town once catered for large influxes of train passengers.

For me, the two most historically interesting facts about the town are that in once had a pier, and it had the world's first passenger hovercraft service. The pier was opened in 1867 and was 718 metres long. Like so many piers it had a troubled history with collisions from ships, fire and storm damage. It was closed in 1966 and demolished in 1973.The hovercraft service operated from the beach and made the 15 mile journey to Wallasey. It was really just a test service to try out the viability of hovercraft services, and only operated from July to September 1962.

And so now onto the clocks.

Our first horological encounter is on leaving the station. The clock stands at the edge of a new bus interchange area immediately outside of the station.

The base of the clock has bilingual plaques on all four sides.

And on the column there is a plaque which states that the clock dates from 1995, with funding sources shown in English and Welsh.

Heading straight for the coast, the way is guided by the town's main clock tower. This stands in a roundabout which forms the junction between High Street, West Parade and East Parade.

The clock tower was built in 1948 and originally stood on the promenade, but was moved to this new location in the 1990s. 

The roundabout location with its nice planting means that it is difficult to see the plaque, which reads This clock tower was presented to the town of Rhyl by Councillor and Mrs R L Davies December 1948.

There are now plans to redesign the road layout so that the tower will no longer be marooned on a roundabout, so in future in may be easier to read this plaque.

You will note from the picture below that consistent time is not shown across its four faces.

The church of St Thomas sits at the junction of Russell Road and Bath Street.

This Grade II listed church was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1869, although the tower followed later in 1874.

The clock is by Joyce and was installed in 1877, and the intricate clock face was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott ("Joyce of Whitchurch - Clockmakers 1690 - 1965 by Steve & Darlah Thomas")

Rhyl Town Hall, on Russell Road, is also Grade II listed and dates from 1876. This means that two major clocks were installed within sight of each other on the same road within the space of less than two years.

                                      

                                            

The building was extended in 1907 to incorporate a Carnegie library.

Our fifth and final clock in Rhyl is on the top of this building on the junction of Water Street and Crescent Road.

This is now a tattoo studio, but was clearly once an important building in the town (no disrepect to tattooists).

The clock is obviously not being maintained, with the time fixed at 12 o'clock and a piece missing from the centre of the face.

More North Wales coastal towns to come.

Bradford

Rain and cold, sleet and cold, snow and cold. Not the best weather on my visit to Bradford, and as a result the photos are not of the best quality.

Bradford was City of Culture last year, with plenty of the signage and other material still in place. But although it was City of Culture, Bradford is certainly bot City of Clockture, with a very paltry tally of clocks for a settlement of its size (perhaps they all sateyed indoors to keep out of the rain). However, you work with what you have got.

Let's start with the cathedral.

It is hard to see the clock from surrounding streets, so you need to get through the gates into the cathedral precinct.

The building, which has parts dating from the 15th century, was designated as a cathedral in 1919, some 22 years after Bradford was granted city status.

The cathedral's website (www.bradfordcathedral.org) notes that the clock was installed not long after four bells were hung in 1666, and that "for a long time this was the only public clock in Bradford".

The clock face is unusual in that it is painted directly onto the stonework.

In the shadow of the cathedral sits the Arts Centre. This is located in St Peter's House. Despite being described in Pevsner (Yorkshire : The West Riding - 1967 edition) as one of the "buildings of no distinction" in Forster Square, it is Grade II listed.

                                        

St Peter's House was built in 1886 as the main Post Office.

The clock is listed in "Potts of Leeds".

Another Potts clock, dating from 1866, can be found in the Wool Exchange. The building in Venetian Gothic style was compled in 1867.

Its wooltrading days are now a distant memory, but it now houses a rather slendid branch of Waterstones (there must be a pun in there somewhere about water stones and Venetian Gothic).

The Town Hall building was completed in 1873, but has since been renamed to City Hall to reflect Bradford's elevation in status in 1965.

The clock tower is described by Pevsner as "a tall tower (200 ft) in the form of a Tuscan campanile".

Leisure Time is an entertainment centre in Westgate.

The style of the clock suggests that it was installed when there was a grander use for the building. Some initial research suggests (can any local Bradfordians confirm?) that this once a department store called Lingards, which closed in 1977. This would certainly seem a better fit for this clock.

The Kirkgate Centre is a brutalist shopping centre (and as a lover of brutalist architecture I have no problem with that). There is a slightly unusual line of eight 'K's over one of the entrances - was this always llike this or did it originally spell Kirkgate?

The clocks, which can be found over the entrances on both Kirkgate and Darley Street, are tired, uninspiring and not working, which equally is a description for the centre itself which seems to have been usurped by the more modern Broadway Centre.

Below are views of the Kirkgate clock:

And this is the one on Darley Street:

Bevan House is a medical centre on Piccadilly. 

There is an interesting way of illuminating the clock, which partially obscures the view of the dial.

A relatively unusual rectangular clock can be found on Northgate.

Oxtoby's is J H Oxtoby & Sons, a clock repair shop established in 1894, and according to the Telegraph & Argus (October 2016) is "believed to be the longest-running family firm in Bradford".

As they are a clock repair business I will give a plug for their website at www.jhoxtobyandsons.co.uk (other clock reapir services in the Bradford may be available - but they probably won't have such a stylish external clock).

The Penny Bank building at the junction of Manor Row and North Parade is a Grade II listed edifice dating from 1894.

It was originally home to a branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank which was established in 1859, becoming the Yorkshire Bank in 1959.

The current use of the buildig seems to be part-time of possibly full-time (depending on different reports) and has a smallish sign saying "The City Gent - Traditional hand pulled ales" at street level.

Facing the Penny Bank is the Clarendon Medical Centre, with a clock tower very much in the style of the building we have just been looking at. 

In the cold and wet and poor light conditions, my thoughts were that this was a long-standing landmark. However, a little bit of digging revealed that in fact it was only built in 1995 as offices for Sovereign Health Care, and is named Royal Standard House. Its new use as the Clarendon Medical Centre only started on 15 January 2026, just two weeks before my visit.

Our final clock is that of St John's church. This is to the south of the city centre, and involved a long walk in pouring rain and strong headwinds alongside a very busy dual carriageway. It was definitely a case of get there, tick if off, and head back to the hotel to get dry and warm up.

You can see by the photo below that it is not in the nicest of locations.

I imagine that there must be other clocks lurking in Bradford, so if you know of any more please let me know - it would be good to re-visit the city in better weather. I am aware of two other clocks - one on the Grammar school which I saw but didn't take pictures of as it was during the school day (people might get the wrong idea), and one on the Industrial Museum which I didn't get time to visit.