ONE of Southampton’s best known landmarks will be ringing in the New Year for the first time in 14 years.

The chimes will ring out from the Civic Centre clock tower as 2012 begins.

Council chiefs hope it will make the nearby Guildhall Square a focal place for residents to gather for celebrations.

Revellers will be able to count down the 12 strikes at midnight, which will be followed by a chorus of its nine bells.

The 156ft-high clock tower houses nine copper bells. Eight chime on the quarter of the hour and the main 3.5 ton bell – Solent Chimes – strikes on the hour. Complaints in the 1980s led to the bells being silenced after 11pm to avoid disturbing sleeping locals.

Former council electrician Charlie Johnston used to sacrifice his own celebrations to climb the 215 winding steps to the clock tower to manually set timers for the midnight chimes each New Year’s Eve until his retirement in 1997.

Now, as part of a £15m overhaul of the Civic Centre and the annual maintenance of the clock tower, an engineer will next week install an electromagnetic hammer to automatically trigger the midnight chimes once a year.

And a chorus of Southampton-born Sir Isaac Watts’ hymn, Oh God Our Help in Ages Past, which plays every four hours during the day, will then be rung out.

Mr Johnston, 75, (below) of Calmore Road, Totton, welcomed the return of the new year chimes. “I think it will be really nice. We used to get quite a crowd. They used to all stand outside waiting for it. People started to look forward to it,” he said.

The city’s leisure and culture boss, Councillor John Hannides, said he hoped the recently-revamped Guildhall Square would become a traditional new year’s gathering place not seen in the city since masses flocked to Holyrood Church in the 1930s.

He said: “It’s welcome that we can now use the area around the Civic Centre and our |fabulous Guildhall Square as a focal point to see in the new year. The council is delighted that it can now have the clock tower chime at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

Southampton’s famous clock tower dates back to 1932, when the Civic Centre was built at a cost of £660,928, although was not part of the original design.