Happy faces will return to historic clock tower this week

Time is set to stand still in Failsworth this week with repairs and servicing of the historic clocktower due to begin tomorrow (Monday).

The faulty clock was reported back in October by Failsworth Councillor Sean Fielding who tweeted an image at the time of one of the clocks four faces displaying ten minutes to seven at quarter to twelve in the morning.

Clock repair specialists, Penrith-based Cumbria Clocks, attended the site and attempted to reset the clocktower’s four dials, but were only able to carry out work on three with the fourth frozen on the external face.

The decision was taken to order a full service of all four of the clocktower’s faces.

This involves removal of the hands and internal movements and polishing, lubrication, reassembly and testing off site in Cumbria Clocks’ workshop.

The removal and dismantling is scheduled to take place tomorrow, with refitting happening, weather permitting, on Friday (January 22).

Failsworth East Councillor Liz Jacques, who also serves as District Lead for Failsworth and Hollinwood said: “Failsworth Pole is an historic site much-loved by the people of Failsworth.

"The clocktower is not just a local but also a regional landmark.

"Clearly it is very important that it tells the right time!”

Failsworth Pole is a site of huge political and historic significance in the area.

A site of Maypoles for centuries the first ‘political pole’, made from a huge ships mast, was erected on February 1, 1793 by loyalist Tories at a time when Failsworth was a split community following the French Revolution.

The 1793 pole was topped with a crown and intended to ‘overawe the Jacobins’.

In response the local left-wing radicals, who saluted the French and American Revolutions, built a Jacobins Library on the green opposite and read Tom Paine’s Rights of Man and other banned books.

The site was also the location of a gathering of the great Oldham contingent on their way to St. Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819.

The group gathered on the green opposite the pole, in defiance of the establishment that the crown-topped pole represented.

The loyalist monument blew down in 1849 and further poles were erected in 1850, 1889 and 1924.

The current clocktower was erected in 1958.

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