Oxfordshire clock still keeping village on time after 500 years
85 comments
·May 29, 2025alfanick
nandomrumber
Does the speed of sound have anything to do with them appearing to sound non-synchronous?
idontwantthis
Shouldn’t there only be two spots where it is synchronous ?
Edit: I was imagining intersecting circles for some reason. All places not equidistant would hear them out of sync.
spiritplumber
You can probably use that to estimate your location!
cogogo
I live in a neighborhood in Boston with a couple of big churches. The hourly bells are useful to teach the kids how to tell time. Especially when out and about. Thankfully none of the bells wake us up but I do appreciate them.
eleveriven
There's something kind of grounding about being able to tell the time by sound alone, like your own analog smartwatch
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Daub
FYI… before the railways it was quite common for one village to have a different agreed ‘time zone’ to villages just a few miles down the road. This time was defined by the clock of the village church. It was the railways which put an end to this.
Doctor_Fegg
Services at Oxford’s cathedral (Christ Church) still begin at five minutes past the hour because of this.
euroderf
Is it also the source of European university classes starting at quarter after ?
eleveriven
Standardized time is such a weirdly modern invention when you think about it... before trains, no one really needed it
pm215
I couldn't find anything with better image quality, but youtube seems to have some 2014 footage of the clock in action (so pre restoration work): https://youtu.be/ix0IxTqgavE
Oarch
This has an almost hallucinatory quality
londons_explore
The video probably had to be transmitted by morse code.
julian55
We have a similar faceless clock in our village although perhaps not as old.
Archelaos
Somewhat related: I was impressed when I once visited Salisbury Cathedral, where there is a restored clock vom 1386 on display. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral_clock
2earth
Hey, I visited SC and was super fascinated by it too! As I commented below I CAD modelled it on my blog:
saltwatercowboy
Lovely work! Good to hear that someone took the time to digitize it. The cathedral is simply astounding.
londons_explore
I wonder if old stuff like this lasts longer when operating or when sitting idle in a display?
Operational means there is wear and someone must occasionally do maintenance etc.
Being on display unmoving obviously has no wear, but also more chance of being forgotten about, rotting, etc.
layer8
"In terms of accuracy, it's pretty accurate."
What more could you want?
Rebelgecko
Ironically the article currently says ""In terms if accuracy, it's pretty accurate."
mattgrice
"In terms if accuracy, it's pretty accurate." :) LGTM (sign off on PR)
mike-the-mikado
It may be in Oxfordshire now, but only since 1974. For most of its life it was in Berkshire (until they decided to that the county should follow the M4 motorway, rather than the river Thames).
bbarnett
So for clarity, it didn't move.
cnewey
Well now, I never expected to see my village on Hacker News. I can actually see this church from my bedroom window - and as if by magic the bells just started ringing 9am!
justincormack
Used to have family there, saw the clock once many years ago.
eleveriven
That's such a wholesome reminder of how deeply intertwined timekeeping used to be with daily life and community
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smitty1e
"You really need to take the upgrade. Enough centuries have passed."
"Oh, all right."
> A modification also saw the installation of a mechanised winding system, ending the requirement for somebody to climb the narrow, winding staircase each day to the clock room to do the job by hand.
I live in a small Swiss village. We have two churches, they ring their bells every hour (number of dong-sounds is equal to the hour). But, they're slightly out of phase, so you can hear two separate churches' bells.
And one of the churches also rings their bells every 15 minutes (1-ring for each quarter). On top of this at 6:00am it rings a whole rhapsody of sounds for whole 5 minutes - "wake up people, time to go to work on a field!".
Initially it may be annoying, eventually you just get used to it, in the end you actually learn to figure out the time from the bell sound and make use of it.