The Morecambe Clock Tower will soon be back in full working order thanks to a team who have also helped restore Big Ben!
The specialist team from Cumbria Clock Company have been working on repairing the 118-year-old landmark just off Morecambe Promenade.
They will be back on site tomorrow (Wednesday) hoping to put the finishing touches to getting the Clock Tower ticking once again.
Beyond Radio spoke to director Keith Scobie-Youngs about the work involved in repairing the Clock Tower.
LISTEN to our interview with Keith Scobie-Youngs
"We specialise in church and public clock restoration," said Keith.
"(Lancaster City) Council got in touch with us to say their clock hadn't worked for a long time and was suffering the ravages of time, if you excuse the pun! We were asked to submit a price for undertaking the work and we were very lucky in winning that tender.
"We are just going to be heading back to just finish off and the good folk of Morecambe will soon be telling their time from their Clock Tower."
The Cumbria Clock Company team removed the dials and faces from the Clock Tower earlier this year, and began the process of repair in their workshop at the top of Lake Ullswater in the village of Dacre, Penrith.
"It's quite a modern clock," said Keith.
"The old mechanical clock disappeared a long time ago and had been replaced by electric motors. In an environment close to the coast, they won't last as long as an old mechanical movement.
"So the dials had started to decay, and the steel rings they were mounted into had started to rust and corrode.
"We brought it all in, we repaired, treated and repainted where the steel rings had corroded, made new cover glasses from polycarbonates, and manufactured four new dials, and an electric clock system that fits in there, which will keep the clock to time, it will correct it after a power failure, and even do the summer and winter time change.
"We're going back tomorrow, we hope to wire it all up to the master clock, plug it in, check all the work, and set it going.
"We will have to come back for a third time just to point up around the dials, but we've got to pick our time to do that.
"All things being equal, it should be up and running and telling the time by the end of the week."
The Cumbria Clock Company have also just finished the restoration of Big Ben, having repaired the Westminster clock (below) for the first time in its 162 year history.
Working with Parliament’s clock mechanics, they reinstalled the Great Clock after taking it away from Westminster and painstakingly cleaning, repairing and restoring more than 1,000 components - including wheels, pinions, bell-hammers and bearings - at their workshop. It was the first time that the entire mechanism was removed from its home in the Elizabeth Tower.
The Cumbria Clock Company has been running for 34 years and will maintain and repair the smallest church or village hall clock up to the magnificent clocks at Salisbury Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace and the country's largest clock dials on the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool.
Lancaster City Council commissioned the repairs on the Clock Tower, at a cost of £12,000.
Here is the Clock Tower pictured on Sunday.
The Clock Tower was given as a gift to the town of Morecambe by Alderman John Robert Birkett in 1905.
It was designed by architects Cressey & Knightley and built by John Edmondson & Co. of Morecambe, while Messrs. Rhodes of Lancaster made the clock.
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