SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

Loinerpete wrote: AliceCake wrote: Of course everyone knows that Oakwood Clock used to be in the middle of Leeds City Markets... Not sure that EVERYONE will know that but yes it certainly was. Yeah, like EVERYONE knows that... x

i knew lol

I didn't. Did they shift it when M&S decided they wanted to put a clock in there?

dsdasd

Leeds Lass wrote: I read recently that it was set not to strike midnight when Queen Victoria was staying in Leeds (probably at the Queen Vic behind the Town Hall). The version that was always told to me was if the clock ever struck 13 chimes the lions would wake up!! lol..

How did I miss this thread?The story I was told was that at midnight the lions got up and ran round the building. Then they sat back in different attitudes. So to this day I check if they are facing the same way but I can never remember.

munki wrote: I didn't. Did they shift it when M&S decided they wanted to put a clock in there? It's been at oakwood for nigh on a hundred years, only seen one pic of it in situe at the market.The attached is dated 1915.

,The bell doesnt toll at 11pm until 7pm. But it does at midnight on new years eve. And its is because of the Leeds General infirmary that it is silenced. It had to have extra bits added onto the ends of the hands, cos from a distance you couldnt quite tell which hand was which. (I have been on the clock tower tour twice) 1pm + 10pm-Standing above the bell.. Well worth going on the tour.,     Post    

The whole thing about the Infirmary is just a cover. Noise doesn't stop them putting gigs on on the Square, does it?A good friend of mine tells me that the staff at the Town Hall stopped the clock striking midnight decades and decades ago, because whenever it did, the ghost of a girl called Mary Blythe, who threw herself in grief from the top of the Clocktower in 1867, walks the steps once again. There is an old song about it which ends;The Judge still sits in Leeds Town Hall, & God he sits on highThe young girl's broken bones, under cold crossed-roads they lieAnd if the clock again strikes twelve, her ghost it wails and criesAnd walks the steps of Leeds Town Hall, once more until sunrise.On New Year's Eve, they wind the clock forward twelve hours, so that though it actually sounds like it is striking midnight, it is actually striking noon. Truth!

,When i went on the clock tower tour, the man who is the time keeper of the clock explained that an extra piece of mechanism was added which when it reaches 11pm it lowers a bar alongside the bell. So it strikes the bar instead of the bell. On new years eve he goes up + switches the mechanism off. So it chimes 11pm,midnight + 1am. He returns before 2am to switch the silencer bak on.,     Post