| Wootton Rivers
lies 5 miles South of Marlborough, it was a thriving community with shops
and plenty of work but now is little more than a weekend retreat, with
extremely high house prices villagers are forced to move to nearby Towns
and very little of the original village spirit is left. In these pages we
will try to show the old village and its sense of community before it is
lost forever. |
St Andrews
Church houses a unique clock built from scrap when the village found it
could not afford a new one to celebrate the Coronation of King George
V in 1911 and a local clock maker offered to build it for free, the
mechanism is a one off, the clock makers guild said it wouldn't work when
he sent them the plans, but it does and keeps very good time.
There are 3 clock faces with Southern one having "GLORY BE TO
GOD" instead of numerals, it is run by 2 large hand wound lead
weights, one for the clock and the other for the strike and chimes, it
strikes on the hour and on every quarter it chimes, once for quarter past
twice for half past etc. these chimes are run like a music box with pegs
on a rotating drum operating hammers on the appropriate bell and has six
tunes played in order so you can tell the time even if you only hear one
chime. Of late the clock has been repaired by professional clock makers
with brand new parts, bronze bearings and universal joints, as it was
built from things like old ploughs, broom handles and pieces of tin it is
rapidly loosing its original character, now |
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| the new
bells have been installed there is no room for the large lead weights and
will now be electrically wound, it seems that given time the Church will
have a brand new clock, one piece at a time!
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until we write the rest of
the site here is a gallery of pictures collected over the years.
Click on a picture to see it full size, click the back button on your
browser to return. |
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