Thinking allowed

Looking after a Tower Clock

A tower clock is a fea­ture of many par­ish churches in Eng­land. Although some date back to the Middle Ages, new clocks were often installed in the Vic­tori­an era when time­keep­ing became increas­ingly import­ant and stand­ard­ized, and a clock and its chimes were a pub­lic ser­vice to the com­munity. All Saints’ Church, St Ives is no excep­tion. Its clock was ori­gin­ally made by Gil­lett and Bland of Croy­don in 1872, and restored in 1930 (when the bells were replaced fol­low­ing the 1918 plane crash that had demol­ished the spire and broken the bells). The firm, foun­ded in 1844, is still trad­ing as Gil­lett and John­ston, and con­tin­ues to ser­vice the clock each year.

It’s a fas­cin­at­ing mix­ture of 19th-cen­tury pre­ci­sion engin­eer­ing, late 20th-cen­tury elec­tro-mech­an­ics, and early 21st-cen­tury elec­tron­ics that sits in a pub­licly inac­cess­ible place near the top of the church tower. Very few people get to see it, but over recent years I have become quite famil­i­ar with the “old thing”, par­tic­u­larly when some­thing goes wrong. I seem to have acquired the job of sort­ing out routine issues with the tower clock and chimes, which involves climb­ing up and down the tower to reset the time shown when it goes wrong, and to sort out the quarter and hour chimes when they go wrong. This art­icle is some­thing of an aide mem­oire or help page, doc­u­ment­ing for myself and oth­ers how to adjust these things. It does not cov­er main­ten­ance and ser­vi­cing of the clock itself: this should be left to the professionals.

Contents

1. Tower Safety
2. Use­ful Tools
3. Set­ting the Clock
   1. Put­ting the Clock Back (1)
   2. Put­ting the Clock Back (2)
   3. Put­ting the Clock Forward
4. Adjust­ing the Quarter Chimes
5. Adjust­ing the Hour Chimes
6. If the Chimes are Jammed
7. Dis­en­ga­ging and Enga­ging the Clock Chime Hammers
8. The Tower Light
9. Get­ting to the Clock Room
10. Some His­tory
11. The Chimes
12. Con­tact Details
13. Dis­claim­er

Tower Safety

All but one of these tasks require access to the clock room at the top of the tower. To get to the clock room you must first climb the 40 or so steps of the iron spir­al stair­case, cul­min­at­ing in half a dozen brick steps into the bell chamber.

Once in the bell cham­ber there is then a fur­ther climb up the intern­al stone spir­al stair­case of anoth­er 20 steps, which takes you nearly to the top of the tower. You need to be reas­on­ably fit and agile and not too wor­ried about heights (though all heights are pro­tec­ted and safe, with just a short sec­tion of a few steps without a handrail).

Nev­er climb up the tower without at least mak­ing sure that anoth­er respons­ible adult knows where you are and how long you are likely to be. Always take a mobile phone with you so that you can raise the alarm if neces­sary. Always turn the tower lights on before climb­ing (don’t for­get to turn them off afterwards!).

Nev­er enter the bell cham­ber unless you know that the bells are down. It is extremely dan­ger­ous – even poten­tially fatal – to enter the bell cham­ber if the bells are up (i.e., mouth up, rung up ready for ringing). If you do not know what this means and do not know how to safely check then you must not enter the bell cham­ber. Talk to the tower cap­tain or anoth­er respons­ible ringer.

The bell cham­ber is filled with beams that are less than 6 feet above the floor, so there is not much head­room. There are also ropes for the Ellacombe Chimes that cross the cham­ber below the beams, fur­ther redu­cing the head­room, and there are a num­ber of items on the floor which are some­thing of a trip hazard.

These notes are no sub­sti­tute for the church’s offi­cial policy doc­u­ment, nor for your own risk assessment.

Useful tools

1. A mobile phone for con­tact­ing oth­er people.
2. An accur­ate watch or clock. The clock on a mobile phone is usu­ally very accur­ate. It is use­ful to have one that dis­plays seconds as well as hours and minutes. You may find the clock at crucix.com/clock help­ful: this can eas­ily be dis­played in a web browser on your phone, and I wrote it for this purpose.
3. A torch. The torch on a mobile phone is usu­ally more than adequate. Although the tower and stairs are lit, a torch is use­ful for examin­ing detail; there is also one dark­er spot on the upper stair where a torch can be help­ful, espe­cially when descending.
4. The bell cham­ber key. You will need this to get into the bell cham­ber at the top of the spir­al stair­case, from where there is access to the stair­case up to the clock level. If you don’t know where the key is kept then ask the tower cap­tain or a churchwarden.
   
5. A small flat-headed screw­driver, for access­ing the elec­tron­ic clock con­trol. A suit­able screw­driver is kept in the clock room.

Addi­tion­ally, for some tasks a second per­son is help­ful, par­tic­u­larly when you want to check what time is shown on the extern­al clock face, while you are up the tower in the clock chamber.

Setting the clock

The radio con­trol should auto­mat­ic­ally cor­rect itself when the clocks are put for­ward one hour at the end of March and back one hour at the end of Octo­ber. If it is wrong at oth­er times, for example if there has been a break in the elec­tri­city sup­ply, it will need correcting.

Depend­ing on the devi­ation from the cor­rect time the clock can be moved for­wards or back­wards – except that it can­not be wound back, only stopped, where­as it can be wound for­ward at 10 times nor­mal speed. So it is usu­ally quick­er to advance the clock: if it is more than about 80 minutes fast then it is quick­er to wind it for­wards (the break-even point is about 72 minutes, but you’ll also have to climb up and down the tower, prob­ably twice, since you have to be up in the clock room to wind the clock for­ward). On the oth­er hand, stop­ping and restart­ing the clock can be del­eg­ated to anoth­er per­son with very little instruc­tion needed.

If the clock and the chimes are both wrong, then put the clock right first, leav­ing the chimes dis­abled. Once the clock is show­ing the cor­rect time then you can sort out the chimes.

Putting the clock back (1)

If the clock is slightly fast then it will need to be put back. This is achieved by stop­ping the clock until real­ity catches up with the time on the clock face!

Although the clock can be stopped from the clock room at the top of the tower, it is also pos­sible to stop it by turn­ing off the power sup­ply, which can be done from the switch­box at the bot­tom of the tower.

1. Go out­side and check the time shown on the clock faces. Work out how long you will need to stop the clock for. (Or: you will need to wait until the time shown on an accur­ate timepiece matches the time shown on the stopped clock face.) You might want to be ready to stop the clock at an exact hour, if that makes the arith­met­ic easier.
2. Open the cup­board by the spir­al stair­case at the north-west end of the church.
   
3. Loc­ate the switch­box and open it
   
4. Identi­fy the switch that con­trols the clock and tower. It’s the third switch from the right labelled “Nave + Tower Lights + Clock Sup­ply”. Double-check you have the right switch!
   
5. Flick the switch down to the “off” position.
6. Wait until the clock is show­ing the right time, and then flick the switch back up to “on”.
7. Close the switchbox.
8. Close and latch the cup­board door.
9. Go out­side and check the time shown on the clock faces.

If the clock needs to be stopped for a con­sid­er­able peri­od then you may find it help­ful to restart it a few minutes before the cal­cu­lated time, so that you can go out­side and recheck the time it shows. Doing this is much easi­er than over­shoot­ing so that the clock is slow and you must advance it, which requires climb­ing the tower, or altern­at­ively stop­ping the clock for nearly 12 hours.

The chimes will not sound when the clock is stopped, so you do not need to worry about dis­abling them.

Putting the clock back (2)

The clock can also be stopped from the clock room. I’ll cov­er this below.

Putting the clock forward

The clock can only be moved for­ward using the con­trol­ler in the clock room at the top of the tower. If you are advan­cing the clock by a sig­ni­fic­ant amount it is help­ful to have a com­pan­ion who will stay out­side the church and let you know when the clock is right. You will need to exchange mobile phone num­bers! Make sure you have read the Tower Safety notes. You should not climb the tower if the bells are up. You should not climb the tower without telling someone else.

1. Go out­side and check the time shown on the clock faces. Com­pare it with an accur­ate clock and note exactly how much it needs to be advanced. Double-check your calculation!
2. Dis­en­gage the chim­ing ham­mers – see here.
3. Go up to the clock room – see here.
4. Look at the clock first. The dial labelled “F” in the pic­ture below dis­plays the time as minutes past the hour. But be care­ful – the hand moves anti-clock­wise. It should agree with the pos­i­tion of the minutes hand on the extern­al clock dials.
   Shafts “A”, “B” and “C” were used to wind the clock and the hour and quarter chimes. They are no longer used. Instead the chimes are elec­tric­ally wound by the motors below “D” and “E”, and the clock by a third motor on top of the clock.
   Wheels “D” and “E” con­trol the hour and quarter chimes respect­ively: they only move when the chimes are triggered (which hap­pens even if the chime ham­mers have been disengaged).
   
5. The clock con­trol­ler is moun­ted on the wall bey­ond the clock itself. Walk past the clock, being care­ful to keep away from the two paddles on the front of the mech­an­ism. These will turn rap­idly when the clock chimes (even if you have dis­en­gaged the chim­ing ham­mers them­selves) and you don’t want your head or fin­gers in the way.
   
   A screw­driver is usu­ally kept on top of the con­trol unit, but it may have been placed else­where, such as on the wooden shelf on which the clock sits. Use it to unscrew the cap­tive screws at the corners of the trans­par­ent front cov­er of the unit. Remove the cov­er and place it and the screw­driver on the shelf.
6. The con­trol knob has four positions:
   
   These are:
   1. Fast for­ward
   2. Stop
   3. Sum­mer time oper­a­tion (the image is pre­sum­ably a sun)
   4. Winter time oper­a­tion (the image is pre­sum­ably a snowman)

   On this clock there is no dif­fer­ence between the sum­mer and winter time set­tings: the clock auto­mat­ic­ally adjusts without any need to switch. In nor­mal oper­a­tion the switch is posi­tioned to set­ting [c].
   Set­ting [b] “Stop” is self-explan­at­ory: turn­ing the knob to this pos­i­tion stops the clock.
   Set­ting [a] “Fast for­ward” is used to advance the clock. It causes the hands to advance one minute every 6 seconds, i.e., 10× nor­mal speed.

7. Think about how much you need to advance the clock. If it’s only a few minutes you can count each minute advanced and be ready to turn the con­trol knob back to set­ting [c] imme­di­ately. But if it is more than, say, 10 minutes, think about how many real-time minutes you are going to leave it advan­cing for. Remem­ber that it will advance by 1 minute every 6 seconds, or 10 clock-face minutes every real-time minute – that’s a clock-face hour in 6 real-time minutes.
8. Turn the con­trol knob to pos­i­tion [a] – fast for­ward.
   You can check how it’s going by observing the minutes point­er on dial “F”, but this won’t tell you the hour.
   If someone is watch­ing the clock from out­side the church for you then you can phone them and liaise on progress.
   If the chimes are cor­rectly syn­chron­ized with the clock then you can look at the hour dial “D”. This too moves anti-clock­wise, and the lever sits in the slot of the last hour to chime: in oth­er words, if the lever is in slot “5” then it is between 5 and 6 of the clock.
   The chimes mech­an­ism will play every time the clock mech­an­ism reaches a quarter – that is, every 90 seconds in real time. And every fourth quarter the hour mech­an­ism will move too. So it’s import­ant to keep out of the way of the paddles, as these will spin every time the clock chimes. All this applies even if the actu­al chim­ing ham­mers have been disengaged.
9. When the clock has reached the cor­rect time, turn the con­trol knob back to pos­i­tion [c] sum­mer time oper­a­tion (even if it isn’t summertime).
10. Place the cov­er back on the con­trol­ler and screw it in pos­i­tion. Place the screw­driver safely on top of the con­trol box.
11. Turn off the light, close the door behind you and des­cend the tower – see here.

Be care­ful with the clock con­trol­ler knob. It can be turned too far and the point­er is then out of sync with where the knob actu­ally is. And you’ll then have work out where it should be. (You can turn it too far in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion to get it back, but it’s tricky to know how far! Been there, done that.)

Adjusting the Quarter Chimes

The quarter chimes are con­trolled by dial “E”. It has four indents or slots cut into the peri­met­er at irreg­u­lar inter­vals. The slots are labelled clock­wise “1”, “2”, “3” and “4”. A lever above the dial sits in one of the slots. At each quarter anoth­er lever is released that raises the first lever out of the slot. This lever in turn releases the drum that turns and causes the wires to the chim­ing ham­mers to move up and down which in turn causes the chim­ing ham­mers to strike the bells. At the same time the dial turns anti-clock­wise until the lever falls down into the next slot. The dial stops turn­ing, the drum stops turn­ing and the chimes cease. The clev­er bit is that the dis­tance from one slot to the next, and the speed at which the dial turns, mean there is just the amount of time needed for one of the four quar­ters to chime. So there is a small gap from “4” to “1”, which chimes the first quarter; a longer gap from “1” to “2” which chimes the second quarter; a longer gap again from “2” to “3” to chime the third quarter; and the longest gap from “3” to “4” to chime the fourth quarter, before the hour chime.

Advan­cing the chimes requires very quick work because as soon as the mech­an­ism starts then the paddles, which are driv­en indir­ectly by the turn­ing dial, also turn. So you need to get your hand out of the way very quickly.

This pic­ture shows the clock from above look­ing down. What you need to do is to lift the lever at point “G” marked with the red arrow. It only needs to be lif­ted about ¼″ – then get your hand out of the way of the paddles. The mech­an­ism will chime the next quarter. When it has all come to a halt you can repeat to advance to the next quarter; and again a third time if necessary.

When the lever has moved to slot “4” (which if the ham­mers are engaged will chime the fourth quarter) this activ­ates the hour chimes, so if you need to advance past “4” you should wait for the hour mech­an­ism (and its paddle) to stop before con­tinu­ing to the next quarter.

Adjusting the Hour Chimes

The hour chimes are con­trolled by dial “D” at the left of the clock. This dial has 12 numbered slots, labelled clock­wise “1” through to “12”. The lever sits in the slot of the last chimed hour, e.g., once it has chimed 10:00 until it starts to chime 11:00 it sits in the slot labelled “10”. In this pic­ture the clock has chimed 9, and will chime 10 next time. As with the quarter chimes the gap between each slot is pro­por­tion­al to the time that it takes to chime the cor­res­pond­ing hour.

Adjust­ing the hour chimes is sim­il­ar to adjust­ing the quarter chimes. How­ever, the mech­an­ism will not oper­ate unless the quarter-chime dial is at pos­i­tion “4”. Once the quarter-chime dial is at pos­i­tion “4” then you can keep advan­cing the hour chimes, hour by hour, until you reach the cor­rect hour.

So the pro­cess for adjust­ing the hour chimes is:

1. Advance the quarter-chime dial to pos­i­tion “4”
2. Advance the hours dial to the cor­rect hour
3. Advance the quarter-chime dial to the cor­rect quarter

In each case “cor­rect” means whatever should have chimed last. So if the time is cur­rently 2:51, the hours dial should be at slot “2” and the quar­ters dial at slot “3”.

The hours chimes are advanced by lift­ing lever “H” at the point shown by the arrow, below. As with the quarter chimes, it only needs to be lif­ted about ¼″ – then get your hand out of the way of the paddles as they chime the next hour.

If you are advan­cing through a num­ber of hours it is pos­sible that the clock will reach the point of chim­ing the next quarter, which wll move the quarter-chimes dial from slot “4” round to “1”. If that hap­pens then you will need to advance the quar­ters anoth­er three times to get them back to slot “4” before you can con­tin­ue advan­cing the hour chimes again.

[To be con­firmed: Lever “J” con­trols when the hour chimes sound – it is respons­ible for lift­ing lever “H” out of its slot. By mov­ing it upwards at the point indic­ated the hour chimes can be advanced even if the quarter chimes are not at pos­i­tion “4”. This has not been checked.]

If the Chimes are Jammed

It has been known for the chim­ing mech­an­ism to become jammed so that the chimes do not run even when the ham­mers are engaged. When this hap­pens the quarter and hour dials get out of sync, per­haps imply­ing that the trig­ger­ing mech­an­ism has jammed, but the exact cause has not been determ­ined. It is neces­sary first to get the chimes work­ing again and then to advance the quarter and hour dials to the cor­rect pos­i­tion. The con­cern in this sec­tion is to get the chimes work­ing – syn­chron­ising the chimes to the cor­rect time is covered above.

When this prob­lem has occurred it has been asso­ci­ated with re-enga­ging the chimes ham­mers, though this may not be the primary cause. The quarter-chime ham­mers are con­trolled by lever “K” at the right of the clock. In this pic­ture it is shown with the ham­mers engaged. Pulling the cable in the church onto the lower hook pulls this lever down. In turn this pushes down the four levers below it (labelled “L”) and pre­vents them from mov­ing. Each of these “L” levers con­trols one of the chim­ing ham­mers of the quarter chimes. By push­ing them down, the ham­mers are moved away from the bells, and the clock end of the levers is dis­en­gaged from the drum that spe­cifies the pat­tern of chimes (i.e., which bell is struck when).

The prob­lem can some­times be fixed from the ground floor by pulling the quarter-chime cable firmly down as far as it will go, and then releas­ing it. This may cause the chimes to sound. If a par­tial chime sounds (some notes miss­ing) then repeat the pro­cess until each note has soun­ded. Wait for the next quarter to hear if the prob­lem is fixed.

Oth­er­wise fur­ther inter­ven­tion at the clock may help. This time, in the clock room manu­ally push lever “K” down firmly onto the lower four levers and then release it. Again, this may cause the chimes to sound. As this can only be done when the chimes are engaged, it is not pos­sible to silence them for this operation.

Once the mech­an­ism is unjammed the chimes can be set to the cor­rect pos­i­tion: see above. To do this you will want to dis­en­gage the chimes: it is help­ful to phone someone on the ground floor of the church to do this – oth­er­wise you will have to climb all the way down and then back up.

If this does not unjam the chimes then you will need to call out the clock engin­eer. See below for con­tact details.

Disengaging and Engaging the Clock Chime Hammers

The chime ham­mers must be dis­en­gaged before the bells are raised for ringing and should be re-engaged once the bells have been lowered. Fail­ing to dis­en­gage the chimes before ringing the bells can res­ult in ser­i­ous dam­age to the bells which can cost many thou­sands of pounds to repair.

The chimes are usu­ally dis­en­gaged for ser­vices and should be re-engaged after the service.

The chimes should be dis­en­gaged if the clock is wrong or if the chim­ing is oth­er­wise awry – chim­ing at the wrong time is an incon­veni­ence, and it is a nuis­ance to the neighbours.

The chimes should be dis­en­gaged before advan­cing the time on the clock, or before advan­cing the chimes, includ­ing the hour chimes.

The chimes are dis­en­gaged and engaged by means of cables that des­cend from the bell tower to hooks on the left and right side of the west door.

The hour chimes are con­trolled by the cable on the south­erly side (to the left as you look at the west door from inside the church), and the quarter chimes by the cable on the north­erly side (to the right as you look at the door). Each cable ends in a small ring; to dis­en­gage the chimes the ring must be removed from the upper hook and pulled down onto the lower hook so that the cable is taut. The cable on the hour side is a par­tic­u­larly tight fit and requires some strength to pull it onto or off the lower hook.

When remov­ing the ring from the lower hook to re-engage the chimes it is best to pull the ring down and hold it taut for a moment before very gently slack­en­ing it while still feel­ing the weight, and put­ting on the upper hook. Oth­er­wise you are likely to cause the clock ham­mers to hit the bells.

The cable for the hour chimes, shown in the lower pos­i­tion, so the chimes are disengaged.

The cable for the quarter chimes, shown in the upper pos­i­tion, so the chimes are engaged.

What pulling the cables onto the lower hooks actu­ally does is to pull the chim­ing ham­mers away from the bells, so that when the chimes oper­ate they hit thin air rather than the out­side of their respect­ive bells. The actu­al chim­ing mech­an­ism con­tin­ues to operate.

The rope for the chim­ing bell (the call bell or sanc­tus bell) is usu­ally tied to the same upper hook as the ring for the quarter chimes so you will need to remove that first when dis­en­ga­ging or enga­ging the quarter chime ham­mers. and retie it afterwards.

The Tower Light

There is a light at the top of the spir­al stair­case, one in the bell cham­ber, anoth­er on the spir­al stair that leads up to the clock room, and there is also a light in the clock room. The first three of these are con­trolled by a single switch at ground level, so you will need to turn it on before climb­ing up the tower – and remem­ber to turn it off when you have come back down.

The switch is in the cup­board at the north-west of the church, just to the right of the spir­al stair­case. The switches also con­trol all the lights in the nave, so be care­ful! The switch for the tower light is at the front of the lower row of switches. If you look up you should see the light at the top of the spir­al stair­case com­ing on or going off as you flick the switch, though there is a short delay.

Getting to the Clock Room

The clock mech­an­ism is housed in a wooden shel­ter at the top of the tower, above the bells, at the level of the louvres. It looks a bit like a small garden shed. Access is up the iron spir­al stair, through the bell cham­ber, up a second, inner, stone spir­al stair, and along a wooden walk­way. All open paths have a hand­rail, so this is not par­tic­u­larly dan­ger­ous, just a rather strenu­ous climb.

You may well brush into cob­webs, which can be a bit dis­con­cert­ing – don’t allow this to make you lose your footing.

Remem­ber: you should nev­er enter the bell cham­ber if the bells are up for ringing.

1. Turn on the tower light – see here.
2. Take your phone and a torch.
3. Take the bell cham­ber key; you will need it at the top of the spir­al stair, so keep it some­where safe (you don’t want to drop it!) and easy to access.
4. Unclip the net­ting at the bot­tom of the staircase.
5. Climb up the staircase.
6. Unlock the bell cham­ber door, remove the key, enter the cham­ber and shut the door.
7. Remove the beam hold­ing shut the door to the upper stair and open the door.
8. Turn on your torch and climb the stone stair. Mind your head!
9. At the top of the stairs go along the wooden walk­way to the clock room.
10. Open the door and go in.
11. There is a light switch to your right, just inside the door.

Leav­ing the clock room is the same in the oppos­ite order.

1. Turn off the light and close the door on your way out.
2. There is one “dark” turn on the stone stair so it is help­ful to turn your torch on before des­cend­ing. And there is one step where there is sig­ni­fic­antly less head­room – mind your head!
3. In the bell cham­ber, close the door behind you and put the wooden prop back against it to keep it closed.
4. Open the bell cham­ber door and put the key in the lock.
5. Exit the bell cham­ber, close the door and lock it.
6. Des­cend the iron stairs.
7. Replace the net­ting around the base of the stair.
8. Turn off the tower light.
9. Return the bell cham­ber key to its prop­er place.

Some History

The clock has a cast iron flat­bed frame design, and is painted in the tra­di­tion­al Gil­let & John­ston col­our of bright green. Dial “F” on the front of the clock mech­an­ism records that the clock was installed, by Gil­lett & Bland, in 1872. In March 1918 an aero­plane of the Roy­al Fly­ing Corps col­lided with the spire. The pilot was killed and con­sid­er­able dam­age was done. The bells were not rehung until Septem­ber 1930, after the com­ple­tion of res­tor­a­tion of the fab­ric. Dial “F” records that the clock was also restored in 1930, per­haps to adapt it to the new, lower, pos­i­tion of the bells in the tower. The clock may also have needed repairs from dam­age caused by fall­ing masonry in 1918.

The clock was a pen­du­lum clock, and the clock and the chimes were powered by the fall of weights, and it was neces­sary to peri­od­ic­ally raise these weights back up to the clock.

Until about 1990, the clock was wound by hand and required wind­ing at least weekly. For many years this was done after the main Sunday ser­vice by Ted Fear­ing (1917–2002). When Ted decided he was no longer able to climb the tower to wind the clock and chimes, St Ives Town Coun­cil fun­ded its con­ver­sion to elec­tric wind­ing. The clock weights were left in the bell cham­ber. At the same time or slightly later, the reg­u­la­tion was changed from a pen­du­lum to radio con­trol (ori­gin­ally broad­cast from Rugby, now NPL at Anthorn in Cumbria).

The Chimes

The quarter chimes play the tune com­monly called the West­min­ster Chimes (because it is played by the clock in the Eliza­beth Tower of the Houses of Par­lia­ment or Palace of West­min­ster) or some­times as the Cam­bridge Chimes (because it ori­gin­ated at Great St Mary’s Church in Cam­bridge). The tune con­sists of five four-note parts, repeated twice across the four quar­ters and played on bells 2, 3, 4, and 7 (ti, la, sol, re in the sol-fa sys­tem; or B, A, G and D if the bells were in the key of C major, which they aren’t – they are in G major). The hours are chimed by the ten­or bell, num­ber 8, (doh).

Part 1: 2 3 4 7
Part 2: 4 2 3 7
Part 3: 4 3 2 4
Part 4: 2 4 3 7
Part 5: 7 3 2 4

These are played across the four quar­ters like this:

First quarter: Part 1
Second quarter: Parts 2 and 3
Third quarter: Parts 4, 5 and 1
Fourth quarter: Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5
The chimes of the hour are played on the ten­or bell:

The chimes are played via a drum that traces out parts 1 to 5 in order, and by the gaps between the slots in dial “E” which con­trol how long the drum turns for. In this pic­ture, taken from above the clock, the drum is below the bar indic­ated. The bar is a pivot for the levers which fol­low the pat­tern on the drum and trans­mit it to the wires at the right which cause the ham­mers to strike the bells.

If the chime tunes are out of sync so that the wrong parts are played then the clock engin­eer will be needed.

Contact Details

The clock, chimes and bells belong to the church, and leg­al respons­ib­il­ity for them lies with the vicar and church­war­dens, just as with all oth­er prop­erty of the church. The bells may only be rung with the per­mis­sion (expli­cit or impli­cit) of the vicar, and this pre­sum­ably includes the clock chimes. There is a canon­ic­al require­ment that a bell is rung before each service.

Day-to-day respons­ib­il­ity for ringing is del­eg­ated to the tower cap­tain, who – with the oth­er ringers, par­tic­u­lary the steeple keep­er – takes a spe­cial interest in routine care and main­ten­ance of the bells. The clock itself does not really fall with­in this respons­ib­il­ity, but because it involves climb­ing the tower and know­ledge of bells and tower safety, the tower cap­tain or oth­er ringers will often also deal with day-to-day or occa­sion­al clock issues.

St Ives Town Coun­cil funds the main­ten­ance and ser­vice of the clock and chimes, as spe­cific­ally allowed by Sec­tion 2 of the Par­ish Coun­cils Act 1957. If it is thought that the clock or chimes need spe­cial­ized work by Gil­lett and John­ston, then the church­war­dens or anoth­er rep­res­ent­at­ive should con­tact the town coun­cil’s Facil­it­ies Man­ager or the Town Clerk. They will liaise with Gil­lett and John­ston and the church author­it­ies to arrange an appro­pri­ate time. Any major non-routine work may need to wait until a sub­sequent budget­ary year.

St Ives Par­ish Church con­tact page
Tower cap­tain email: bells@stivesparishchurch.org.uk

St Ives Town Coun­cil con­tact page

Gil­lett and John­ston con­tact page

Disclaimer

This guide has been writ­ten by the tower cap­tain at St Ives, Cam­bridge­shire, based on his exper­i­ences with the clock in that church.

Although it is writ­ten with the best inten­tions, neither the tower cap­tain, nor the vicar and church­war­dens of St Ives Par­ish Church, nor St Ives Town Coun­cil, accept any respons­ib­il­ity for mis­takes, nor for any dif­fer­ences with any oth­er clock, nor for fail­ure to fol­low neces­sary loc­al safety measures.

You are wel­come to use this as a guide, and to adapt it for your own use, but you should sat­is­fy your­self that you are doing the right thing and act­ing safely.

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Simon Ker­shaw
tower cap­tain, St Ives, Cambridgeshire
Septem­ber 2024