Bell Tower

Before the need of a clock, time would be marked by how long it took to walk somewhere, or gently watch the shadows fall.

This all changed with the coming of the iron road, railroad to those one side of the Atlantic, railway on the other. 

So who would want a clock that strikes the top of the hour 5 minutes later than expected? Well, for centuries this was the standard time Oxford kept from that of London…a mere 60 miles away. 

Nowadays, with every Tim, Richard and Sally having their own timepiece, how many glance up to this grand structure to check their schedule? More likely just the tour guide and security. 

500 years of hanging around, Tom Tower and its bell to whom the structure is so named, looms like a beacon over buses and tourists who trickled past. It’s what’s on the inside - as always  - which fascinates me, for wrapped in honey coloured Cotswold stone is ancient Great Tom, nabbed, then dragged and hoisted up from a long since swept away abbey, just a broken stones throws away. 

But why the quirk of chiming in the hour a whole 5 mins late. Well, we’ve gotta go back to a pre-railway age for that, when the sun dipped in the west a little later than London, and although it still merrily does on occasions when it does decide to come out, for the benefit of railway timetables, all clocks in the land were standardised. So ended Oxford’s happy reign of having its own distinct local time.

Once a distinct 5 minutes and 2 seconds behind its capital city, so the bell still tot his day tolls late to symbolise this quirk every night at 21:05, serving too as the city’s Curfew Bell, instructing neighbouring colleges to bolt their doors til the morning. Sadly the clock’s happy face has fallen into line and now succumbed to a standardised UK time. 

A devilish part of me would reinstate Oxford’s time on this one time time-piece in a heartbeat, especially now as most pay it little attention for its intended purpose. 

An out of step striking clock, perched above, would surely cause a stir, a minor historical rumpus on this otherwise poker-faced street.