11 Jul 2024
Anyone visiting St Albans city centre in recent weeks cannot fail to have noticed the scaffolding around the Clock Tower.
The 15th century edifice is undergoing “vital repairs” which have been approved by Historic England.
The external works include refixing missing louvres to bell room windows, removing and replacing loose pointing, repointing stonework where required, resecuring any loose stonework, replacing any missing flintstones removing any previous cement-based repairs and repointing using lime mortar, and minor repairs of the wooden window frames.
Internally, the work involves painting the walls to ground floor with a limewash (this allows the walls to dry out) and minor repairs to the pointing of the steps and the window frames.
Built in 1405, the Clock Tower is now the only surviving medieval town belfry in England, and over the centuries has been a shop and a government telegraph station during the Napoleonic wars.
Gabriel, the Tower’s original one ton bell, remains in place, and in past times would have sounded the Angelus and the evening Curfew. It would have also rung out an alarm in case of “fire or fray”, such as at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455.
The present clock dates from 1866, and uses a mechanism invented by Lord Grimthorpe, who not only restored the Cathedral but also designed the mechanism used by the clock for Big Ben at Westminster.
After falling into a state of disrepair in the middle 19th century, a proposal was made to demolish the entire Clock Tower in 1863, which was thankfully fought off by a campaign initiated by St Albans Civic Society, St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, and a fledgling Herts Advertiser.
The restoration work cost £1,000 and was completed in 1866.
The Scheduled Ancient Monument is opened by volunteers from the Civic Society and SAHAAS (The St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society) every weekend and bank holiday Monday from 10.30am to 5pm until the end of September, and remains open as usual while the various works are undertaken.
