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.