Southampton clock tower was the centre of attention

After the Civic Centre tower, the Bitterne Park Triangle clock is probably the next best known local time piece around.

Since the day the clock was officially inaugurated in 1889 it has witnessed many of Southampton’s historic milestones.

There was the sailing of the ill-fated Titanic, men in their thousands marching off to the Western Front of the First World War, the great heydays of the ocean-going liners, the ravages of the Second World War and Coronation Day street parties.

Today the clock might gently list towards nearby Cobden Bridge but it is still an impressive structure although not as impressive as the pomp and ceremony that surrounded the civic occasion which marked its unveiling nearly 126 years ago.

There was quite a stir in Southampton’s High Street and Above Bar at noon on December 9, 1889, when a procession, headed by the Mayor, James Bishop, left the Audit House and headed northwards.

Passing Holy Rood, the Dolphin, the Star, the old-established shops of Randall Wilson, Lankesters, Creed and Breton and Mayes, the procession made its way through a busy town with horse trams rumbling up and down the street.

Sotonians become submersed in the pomp and ceremony surrounding the official unveiling of the Clock Tower on December 9, 1889

Through the Bargate and along Above Bar it went to its junction with New Road where the brand new clock stood, the centre of attraction.

The look of the clock was the work of architect and surveyor Sydney Kelway Pope, of 27 Portland Place, who won £25 in a design competition for the £1,000 monument.

“There was a large assemblage of town notables, with shining silk top-hats and frock coats,” says one account.

The official description of the clock tower said it was: “A noble clock tower in early Gothic style having four dials and a drinking fountain with a trough for cattle and horses and at the foot on the north and south sides little troughs for dogs.

“The drinking fountain itself was on the west and had its own cup suspended on a chain.”

According to the inscription on the tower the clock was bequeathed to Southampton by Mrs Henrietta Bellenden Sayers “in evidence of her care for man and beast.”

Soon it became a recognised part of the scene in Above Bar, but times eventually changed - horses all but disappeared and cattle were no longer driven through the streets.

The day arrived when Southampton council decided the clock tower would have to go because it was in the way of vehicles so it was carefully dismantled and rebuilt at Bitterne Park Triangle in 1935.