The Clock Tower is the only medieval town belfry in England. The Clock Tower was built in 1405, as confirmed by recent dendrochronological testing of the timbers in the floors. The plot was vacant in 1403 as a deed conveys the land from Alice, relict of Ralph att Lee to Geoffrey Fylynden. In 1412 a deed refers to the tower as the “le Clokkehouse”. The town’s people engaged THOMAS WOLVEY, formerly
the Royal Mason, to build the Clock House for them. In 1427 the Clock Tower was passed over to body of officers to run and in time to the Corporation of St Albans. Today it is owned and repaired by the Council of St Albans. It is 77 feet high with walls 4 feet thick. It is consists of 5 floors:
- the ground floor which was used as a shop, is now the entrance room
- 1st Floor was living chambers and is now empty but retains the fireplace
- 2nd Floor was also living chambers and houses the main part of clock mechanism
- 3rd Floor contains the part of the clock mechanism that attaches to the clock face
- 4th Floor contains the bells
There are two bells inside, the larger one is named after the Archangel Gabriel and has been in the tower since it was built. It was cast in 1335 in Aldgate in London by WILLIAM and ROBERT BURFORD and weighs one ton and is 46 inches in diameter. It was rung at 4am to wake the town’s people for work and at 8pm in the winter and 9pm in the summer for Curfew. It was rung in cases of fire or as a warning of trouble in the town. This practiced continued until 1861 when some of the inhabitants petitioned that it might cease. The last time the clock was swung to sound the bell was in 1901 for the funeral of Queen Victoria. The frame is now so weak that it is rung by being “clocked” on the side. The small bell, dated 1729, was moved from the old Market House in 1855. The tower contained a clock probably from the time of its erection, but there is definite evidence of the existence of a clock in 1485, when directions were given as to its maintenance and repair. The original clock had no outside face and the clock keeper had to strike the hour as indicated by the clock inside the tower. The current clock mechanism was made in 1866 by John Moore Sons and was put in place when the tower underwent major renovations. The clock face that you see now was put up in 1958. The present clock incorporates a four-legged gravity escapement invented by Lord Grimthorpe, the local horologist and restorer of the Abbey who designed Big Ben's mechanism.
