Trowbridge

Trowbridge, population 37,000, is the county town of Wiltshire, although it is now the unitary authority of Wiltshire rather than the county council. So it makes sense to start our visit at County Hall in Bythesea Road (which incidentally is nowhere near being “by the sea”).

 

County Hall was designed by the architect Philip Hepworth and was completed in 1940. The clock is housed on a wooden lantern.

                                     

                                        

 

Time to go down in scale from County Hall to Town Hall, the latter sitting in the town centre on Market Street.

 

Not knowing anything about Trowbridge before my visit, I was surprised that it was once a major mill town making cloth, known as the Manchester of the West. It therefore makes sense that the Town Hall was funded by a local cloth merchant by the name of Sir William Roger Brown, who offered to pay for the building as a celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee (an event which led to many new clocks appearing across the country, either on buildings such as Trowbridge’s Town hall or on stand-alone clock towers).

                                     

The building was opened on 14 June 1889. The clock is on what is described as an Italianate style tower.

 

The clock was provided by J.W.Benson Ltd. This company seems to have been a watch rather than a clock maker, so it is not clear whether they manufactured or merely supplied it.

 

The building is now run by the Trowbridge Town Hall Trust and has a variety of community functions.

 

 From a pair of municipal buildings we now move to a brace of ecclesiastical ones.

 Holy Trinity is known locally as the Church on the Roundabout as it was encircled by a road “improvement” scheme in the 1970s.

 

The building is Grade II* listed and was consecrated in 1838.

 

Our second church is St James in the heart of the town.

 

The original church was built in about 1200, but the current building dates from the 14^th century onwards, with major restoration in 1848.

 

The Grade I listed building has a spire reaching 49 metres, second only in Wiltshire to Salisbury Cathedral.

 

The local museum has a nice model of the church, including of course the clock.

 

Two municipal buildings, two churches and finally two retail buildings. First is the Tesco superstore.

 

Not an exciting building, but the clock face looks good in blue and gold.

And finally we have this clock on Silver Street,

Maidstone (Part 1)

My backlog on posting is getting a bit out of hand now, so lets deal with the latest visits and come back some other day to those in the queue.

Maidstone, proud home of Kentish Men, or is it Men of Kent? Something to do with where you are in relation to the River Medway or something like that. Anyway, it is the proud home of the people of Kent, being the county town of said administrative area. Perhaps I should go back to the backlog. No, push on.

Clock  number one is this unusual tower on Broadway, where the road crosses the Medway.

It is somewhat marooned on what is in effect a large traffic island, made worse by the current road works which prevent a close-up inspection.

You can get a completely different angle of view by walking along the river:

By the way, does this upturned chair effect of the top of the tower have any local significance? The motif is repeated in an artwork by County Hall.

The postcard view of Maidstone is All Saints church by the river on Mill Street.

The clock was made by Gillett & Johnston in 1899.

It was built on the site of a 7th century church, but the current building dates from 1398.

As well as its clock, All Saints also boasts a sundial. Old technology, hah!

I probably should say more about the church, but I am actually more interested in this fabulous building nearby. Originally a Rootes garage, it is still today selling Peugeot cars.

A walk up the High Street brings us to the Town Hall, which dates from 1763.

Before reaching the Town Hall, turn left into Pudding Lane, At the end of the road you can see the clock under the sign of Fremlin Walk.

Fremlin Walk is a shopping centre, albeit quite nice as it is open-air. It was built on the site of the Fremlin brewery, whose emblem was an elephant. This gateway and its clock are all that remain of the brewery, which was once the largest in Kent.

If you walk under the arch and into the shopping centre you can see the other side of the wall - the clock is less impressive from this side, but I assume that it did not originally have a face as it had a rather useful brewery building all around it.

As I have said many times before, when ever you are drawing blanks in the great clock hunt, you can often rely on Marks and Spencer to come to your rescue.

This is the Maidstone store on Week Street (the home of 7 day shopping!). Week Street, so the leaflet "A Walking Tour of Historic Maidstone" informs me, lies along the line of a Roman road to Rochester. Which is somewhat ironic as none of the three clocks on the street has Roman numerals.

Just along Week Street is this clock on the branch of the Halifax.

I am indebted to Sarah P in the Ashford branch of H Samuel for pointing me in the direction of this one - it is on a busy street and is quite easy to miss (as I had done several times already).

The third clock on Week Street is on the corner of St Faiths Street.

It looks like it was originally illuminated, but at the moment is permanently stuck at 2.23.

Turning down St Faiths Street we see the church of the same name.

Next up is County Hall, and wow what a dartboard of a clock.

The building originally dates from 1910 - 13, with later extensions, and has a fine clock tower.

Finally, the large wall gives a clue that this next clock can be found within the grounds of the prison, which dares from 1812 - 1819.

Part 2 will look at the clocks outside of the town centre.