Clock This: Romford

Let's take a short break from Leicester and go on a chronologically mixed up trip to Romford.

This modern building is just south of the railway station, and is on the slightly improbably named Atlanta Boulevard.

Not much more to say other than it is a building with a clock! Other than to say that said clock is not working.

Clock not working? This seems to be a local theme. I spotted three of these standard JCDecaux advertising boards with clocks. The first two are set up as a pair in South Street. This is the first, showing the wrong time:

...but at least it has a different wrong time on the other side so you can be thoroughly confused.

And a few metres up the road is its twin, showing the wrong time, but with a consistency in temporal error on the two faces.

And remember, you can't vote if you arrive too late at the polling station.

Ooh, what's this? A colourful edifice with a neat clock attached a little further up South Street.

This is the Liberty shopping centre. Showing the correct time. Hurrah!

A quick google of Romford clocks before my visit showed a completely different entrance with a completely different clock on a differently named shopping centre - Stewards Walk. Which I think has now morphed into this new name and new entrance.

Staying with shopping arcades, this rather odd-shaped but nevertheless nice clock is at the market square entrance to The Quadrant.

I am not sure if I have ever seen a public clock quite this shape before. At least it means you don't bang your head on it.

On the other side of the market place is the parish church of St Edward the Confessor.

The church was built in 1849-50, and subsequently renovated in 1944, at which point an electric clock was installed.

The Quadrant entrance and the church are on two sides of Market Place. The market itself was granted a charter by Henry III in 1247, and so has been running for getting on for 800 years.

On the east side of Market Place stands this building:

If you negotiate the underpass, it can be viewed from other angles.

So we have seen clocks on the north, east and south sides of Market Place. So is there one on the west side? I can sense that this hole in your knowledge is gnawing away at you. So the answer is no. (Can a hole gnaw?)

However, the Co-op bank building is at the western end, but unfortunately for those of you who love perfect symmetry, the clock is on the South Street side of the building and hence faces away from the market.