It’s time to get it right!
TIMES are finally a-changing in Stockport as a project has begun to get the town’s clocks back telling the right hour.
The issue of many of the borough’s publicly displayed time pieces being incorrect whether by being slow or having stopped altogether - was raised last summer.
Excluding churches, clocks in the town centre were found to fare particularly poorly with nine out of 14 wrong.
But two of the offenders, the pair at McDonald’s at Grand Central, have now been fixed and are both illuminated and telling the right time. And it is hoped that work can take place to correct others in the near future.
Councillor Philip Harding, who originally raised the issue, said: “I think this is a positive step, it is important to have clocks in the centre of Stockport that are working.
“If the clocks are not working it looks like no one is bothered and also, if for no other reason, it’s handy for people to know what the right time is.”
Stockport Council is behind the move to fix the clocks, although it does not own many of them, including the two at McDonald’s.
It has enlisted the help of Phil Rowbotham, from Stockport Heritage Trust and Mark Bradshaw, a clock restoration specialist.
Others that were found to be incorrect included the famous Winters clock, on Lower Hillgate, stuck at 3.30, and the one at the Union Bank of Manchester, on Bridge Street, at 75 minutes slow.
Even the government’s Department for Work and Pensions building, on Wellington Road South, had a clock an hour slow.
And the most confusing clocks were the four on the Primark building. One had stopped completely at 2.45, the three others were two hours and 20 minutes slow.
Only the four at Stockport Town Hall and the clock at Sports Direct, on Warren Street, were correct.
Stockport Heritage Trust has posted the news on its Facebook page.
James Finlinson posted in response: “Does this mean that Winter’s clock will be repaired? Or, with all its wonderful component “Mind, the way that parts, will that perhaps Stockport has changed be a step too far? so much over the last 50 years, some bright spark will want to replace it with digital.”