What time is it? - Historic town clock to get facelift

The clock outside Wakefields Jewellers, in West Street, has been ticking in the town ever since it was built back in 1935.

However, many eagle-eyed shoppers have raised concerns about the recent disappearance of the faces on both sides of the clock.

Speaking to the County Times Dominic Wakefield, owner of the store, explained they had been removed for some much needed repairs, the first to be completed since the clock was installed eight decades ago.

He said: “The poor clock went up in 1935 and it has been through a lot since.

“The problem we have is when it goes wrong everyone notices and when it goes right no-one notices.

“We do tend to get a lot of people coming and saying ‘call yourself a jewellers, your clock doesn’t even work’.

“Most of the time they are joking but not always.”

Dominic explained the clock itself is run by another bigger clock inside the store called a Synchronome.

He said: “You can see some of those clocks in the Greenwich museum but there are not many left in the country.

“So we own a very rare one.”

The store has replaced the faces with a couple of messages, created by company communications manager Georgina Marfe.

Currently one side reads ‘Keep calm the Wakefields clock will be back soon’ whilst the other encourages people to shop at the jewellers stating ‘What time is it? Time to get a new watch at Wakefields’.

Dominic said: “We just want to cheer up the town really and we thought rather than leave it empty we could put a cheeky little message in there.

“We were tempted to have a number of them and switch them out each week. They may change during the coming weeks.”

He added he hoped to have the clock faces repaired by the middle of January.

Once repairs have been made the store plans on carrying out extra work on the clock itself.

Dominic said: “It has an internal lighting system which has not been working for 30 years.

“We want to fix that and have it light up for late night shoppers.

“Hopefully people in the town will be pleased.”

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