Time to get wound up about town’s clocks
ANOTHER year passes and time goes by – but in several parts of Stockport it stands still, notably at Winter’s former Clockhouse, Little Underbank, which used to sell clocks and watches, but is now a Holt’s pub.
The delightful chimes from three canopied bells struck by a Victorian Soldier, Sailor and ‘Old Father Time’ complete with scythe, once rang out every 15 minutes and marked the long days I once spent in the reporter’s room at the Stockport Advertiser building in Royal Oak Yard over the way, audible even above the clattering of a dozen typewriters.
The figures are almost unique in England – there is one similar shop front clock in Gloucester.
Heritage Lottery money may pay for repairs to set the Clockhouse mechanism going again. We hope to find out in January.
Currently it is a case of manual winding with pulleys and weights, not a popular job for the licensees so the Underbanks Townscape Heritage bid wants an automatic system.
The figures and canopies were installed by Jacob Winter who took over an existing shop in the 1880s as a jewellers and clock retail business.
Susan and Barrie Vernon, the last jewellers, closed in the late 1980s and the building was stripped out for conversion to a wine bar which opened in 1992.
The central ornate staircase and moulded ceiling were retained, as was the Victorian glass frontage.
A hydraulic security system operated by springwater, which raised and lowered the window display was too corroded to save. So Little Underbank has lost the buzz and the bells which once characterised it as a busy shopping street.
Elsewhere, the 1960s clock on Merseyway has gone, that on Primark’s Chestergate store is stopped, the Warren Street clock on the courts block is usually wrong and only the Town Hall clock and St Mary’s Church tower clock on the Market Place seem reliable.
In an age of mobile phones maybe clocks and watches are obsolete, but Winter’s clock beside St Petersgate Bridge spanning Little Underbank is one of Stockport’s best-known landmarks.
The sound of chiming bells will again add unique character to a charming area. So time (to cough up) gentlemen please! »●More information on Winter’s clock, and other historic clocks can be found in back copies of Stockport Heritage Magazine at St Mary’s Heritage Centre, Market Place, or by looking online at stock port heritage magazine.co.uk.