Bucklebury St Mary's Church Clock

The eight day striking made by Gillet & Bland of Croydon, it is dated 1882 which probably its installation but we are not aware of historical confirmation in church records. The clock was wound by hand once a week that is to say the clock mechanism itself and the striking mechanism. The weights for hang below the clock as far down as behind the West Door. The clock strikes the hour but has a limit between the hours of 8am and 8pm - though this could be limited further.

When Ken Bartholemew became unable to continue the task of climbing 39 steps to wind the heavy weights once a week and reliable volunteer 'winders' were hard to find, Robin Wallace Simms, a retired mechanical engineer from AWRE Aldermaston designed an electrical winding mechanism that activated a motor to wind the clock's mechanism when the weights lowered to a given point. Most of the parts were made by Marcus Allum in his workshop. Sadly, Robin WS died before the mechanism was fully 'proven' but the clock now electrically winds itself and keeps a remarkably good time. The electric motor for the ' Wallace Simms' winding gear was a starter motor for, I think, an Austin 7.

We have not been able to discover what clocks have been created in the tower but some evidence could be found in the Oxford Records Office post 1843 when Bucklebury became a parish in the newly created Oxford Diocese having previously in Salisbury.

There evidence that there was a clock in the tower in 1812. There is an engraving dated 1812 which clearly shows the clock face not as is in the central south facing slit window but approximately 'two o'clock' of the existing clock face. With a little imagination one can see a chain of flints that could have supported a clockface. 

As an after-thought, it is worth remembering that the church clock in a parish was the only time piece other than in the 'big house' and there was no regulated coordinated time until the development of our railway system, thus Bucklebury Time could be quite different from Newbury Time.

As an update on the clock at Bucklebury from Martin Rice who now regularly tends the clock. I became involved with it in 2020. At that time the automatic winding system was not working and the church warden, Thomas Service, was winding it manually. The electrical system had been updated by Jon Bishop and was working but a mechanical clutch was malfunctioning. He managed to modify it to work more reliability and the system started working again.  

I also added an electronic monitoring and control system which measures various aspects of the clock and uploads the data to a webpage Https://thingspeak.mathworks.com/channels/1289670. This reveals that the clock actually stops ticking when the drive weight is being raised (although the pendulum keeps going) resulting in a loss of about 40 seconds, three times a day. To compensate the going is set to beat 2 minutes a day fast. Timekeeping thus varies from 20 seconds slow to 20 seconds fast on a regular 8-hour period. I don't think the locals notice!

The system is unique and quite complex and something goes wrong every few months. During the recent hot weather a drive coupling which appeared to have been assembled with some sort of glue (possibly Loktite) had come apart, resulting in the weight descending all the way to the bottom of the tower and the clock stopping. A short visit to Marcus Allum resolved the problem and the clock is now fully functioning.