Banbury

 

No clock to start with, but we can't investigate Banbury without showing the Banbury Cross of nursery rhyme fame:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

There were not many horses, cock, white or otherwise, on my visit, but we do start our clock tour on a road called Horsefair.

 This is the church of St Mary The Virgin, consecrated in September 1797.

The church is Banbury's only Grade I listed building. The cylindrical tower was completed in 1822.

I must also give my apologies for the quality of some of the pictures as they were all taken on my phone rather than my usual camera.

Just down the road is our second church, this time St John's on South Bar Street.

St John's dates from 1838, and is described in Pevsner's as "aisleless, with a mean west tower with top-heavy pinnacles".

My perambulations took me to two unidentified buildings opposite each other on Broad Street. Both would seem to be old works of some description.

The first building has the inscription "Established 1866" above the clock.

Opposite is what is now Crofts Pet Foods Ltd.

Just a little way along Broad Street at its junction with George Street is the old Co-op building, described in a caption to a photograph in Banbury Museum as a working man's palace in a working man's district.

The octagonal tower has clock faces on alternative sides, with the clock itself originating from Synchronome of London, a firm which still exists but is now based in Hay-on-Wye.

The Town Hall, dating from 1854, is described by dear old Pevsner as "ponderous" and having a "dumpy spire".

From towers and spires to scissors and curling tongs. Hair Concepts is on Marlborough Road, a thoroughfare where it is always hair time.

Staying with commercial premises , Anker the estate agents on High Street looks like it inherited a clock when it moved into the premises.

The Banbury Health Centre is on Concord Avenue, although I am not sure if it can be all that healthy with the busy road junction right in front of it.

Our final clock is at the Banbury Borough Bowling Club.

Scarborough

Scarborough is a town I haven't visited for over 40 years, and I soon found out that it was my lost. It is a surprisingly interesting town, and certainly way above some of the run down British seaside resorts.

As usual, my arrival my train by a somewhat uncommonly reliable TPE service means that the first port of call is the railway station.

The station was opened on 7th July 1845, and it is claimed that it has the longest station seat in the world, measuring 139 metres. I only noticed this construction, which is fitted along the back wall of a platform, as I was leaving, so didn't get the chance to get a photo.

The clock itself is by Potts of Leeds, and was added in 1884.

Besides the clock tower, there is another public time piece on the platform (there may be others but the station interior was covered by a considerable amount of scaffolding at the time of my visit).

This next lovely clock face can be found on Westborough. I assume that the text on the clock is the motto of Scarborough.

Next up is a not very exciting clock on Lloyds Bank at the junction of St Nicholas Street and Newborough.

The Boyes store rather lurks in a side street, or at least that is the way it felt to me as a visitor. Queen Street comes off Newborough, and I was not expecting to see this substantial building sitting quietly on a corner.

And there aren't that may octagonal clock towers around.

It also has a lurking presence it that the low key branding suggest that this is a newcomer squatting in a building that was once owned by a much grander enterprise. But this is so far from the truth. By one of those weird quirks of faith in life, I have recently purchased "Departing Stores - Emporia at risk" by Harriet Lloyd, published by SAVE Britain's Heritage (www.savebritainsheritage.org). This tells me that Boyes was founded in 1881, and that this building dates from 1916.

Nearby is the Market Hall with its workaday clock inside.

Back out in the fresh air and the sea breezes, we come across this building on the south side of the Old Harbour.

One of the great features of many seaside towns is a funicular railway linking the beach with the town on higher ground. Scarborough has been home to no less than five of these wonderful transport machines. Of particular interest to this blog is the Central Tramway, which was opened in August 1881.

Not only is the tramway of transport interest, but it has a clock on its lower station:

....and on its upper one:

For those with an interest in funicular railways, I would recommend the book "Cliff Railways, Lifts and Funiculars" by Martin Easdown, published in 2018 by Amberley Publishing.

My visit only allowed enough time to visit a relatively small part of the town, so my pictures of the clock on St Mary's Church are taken from a distance.

St Mary's has its origins in the 12th century, but was rebuilt in the 17th century and restored in the 19th. Its churchyard includes the grave of Anne Bronte.

I did get time, however, to pay a close up visit to another church, this being St Andrew's (built 1864 - 68) on Ramshill Road.

The Clock Cafe is a cafe with a clock - not much more to say really.

If you do an internet search for clocks in Scarborough, this is the one that is most likely to appear - the clock tower on The Esplanade, also known as the Holbeck Clock Tower.

The now Grade II listed tower was built in 1911 to commemorate the coronation of King George V (it would be nice to think that some new clock towers will be built to celebrate this year's coronation).

The clock itself was presented by Alfred Shuttleworth, as recorded on a plaque.

It was converted to an electric motor in the 1960s "after a council employee tasked with winding it became stuck in the tower overnight when his ladder slipped" (quoted from the website www.southcliffgardens.co.uk).

A quick peek over the hedge from a distance at the clock on the Scarborough Academy Sports Ground. Fear not, the ground was not being used by school children at the time so there was no chance of any impropriety.

Time now for some more scaffolding. It is always annoying when it obscures the view of a clock, but hopefully it means that the timepiece in question has a future. This is the old Falsgrave County Modern Girls School on Falsgrave Road.

And with that we bring our visit to Scarborough, a jewel on the Yorkshire coast, to a close.