{"id":2913,"date":"2016-09-24T11:31:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T11:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kildare.ie\/ehistory\/?p=2913"},"modified":"2024-06-17T15:26:08","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T14:26:08","slug":"naas-town-hall-clock-150-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/naas-town-hall-clock-150-years-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Naas Town Clock – 150 Years Old! (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

150 years of the Naas Town Hall Clock<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liam Kenny<\/strong><\/p>\n

The year to date has been one brimming with anniversaries mainly centered on the nation-building events of Easter 1916. For months there were parades, presentations and plaques all marking the centenary of what W. B. Yeats described as \u201cthe terrible beauty\u201d\u00a0 of that tumultuous year in the evolution of modern Ireland.\u00a0 The indigenous anniversaries were paralleled by the sombre memorial events that marked the centenary of the barbaric carnage of the First World War as epitomised by the battle of the Somme when legions of young men were pulverised into the soil of France by the merciless machinery of modern warfare.<\/p>\n

However among all the echoes of war and politics there are other anniversaries \u2013 of an altogether more genial kind – which have slipped beneath the radar. One notable birthday – brought to the attention of this column by the ever observant Cllr Seamie Moore — is the sesquicentenary of the Town Hall Clock in Naas which has been a central feature of the streetscape of the county town since it was erected in 1866. That\u2019s a lot of ticking down the hours and minutes across 150 years in all seasons and weathers.\u00a0 The clock was erected by public subscription not long after the town\u2019s first town council took up occupation of the building. The mechanism hidden deep in the loft of the Town Hall is a beautifully engineered contraption of cogs, fly-wheels, axels and balances fashioned from brass and steel. It is set in a cast iron frame bearing the name of \u201cJohn Chancellor, Dublin\u201d who was a well-known maker of municipal turret clocks in Victorian Ireland. Two weight driven pulleys drive the mechanism \u2013 one for the clock and one for the bell.<\/p>\n

The hourly tolling was produced by a striker hitting the bell mounted in a louvered shelter on the roof. The bell too is hallmarked with the name of a Dublin foundry bearing the inscription \u201cSheridan, 1866\u201d. Also inscribed on its parabolic profile is the Hibernian harp emblem of Ireland with the patriotic slogan \u201c\u00c9ireann Go Br\u00e1gh\u201d. The bell is all but inaccessible in the Town Hall attic but a trip to Sallins will afford a ready view of the bell\u2019s brother \u2013 also cast by the Murphy foundry and bearing identical inscriptions. The Sallins bell is mounted on a frame outside Sallins\u2019 distinctive \u201ctin church\u201d or to give its ecclesiastical title \u2013 the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and the Guardian Angels.<\/p>\n

The Naas clock has not been free of upheaval over the years. The fa\u00e7ade of the Town Hall was reconstructed by John Eacret, local builder, in 1904. This involved setting the clock dial at a greater distance from the mechanism than had been the case in the original 1866 configuration.\u00a0 This in turn necessitated the installation of a longer spindle from the clock mechanism to the dials and it is this improvised linkage which has proven something of a weak link over the years.\u00a0 At one stage a town councillor frustrated by the clock\u2019s occasional erratic behaviour told a meeting: \u201cPassing the town hall clock is like crossing the international date line \u2013 it tells a time on one face, and then a different time on the second face!\u201d However the clock has been the recipient of skilled conservation by horologist Julian Cosby (of the Stradbally Hall family) who has burnished up its cogs and gears and at 150 years of age the town\u2019s \u201cOld Father Time\u201d is outliving the time-keeping abilities of any of its human critics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

150 years of the Naas Town Hall Clock Liam Kenny The year to date has been one brimming with anniversaries mainly centered on the nation-building events of Easter 1916. For months there were parades, presentations and plaques all marking the centenary of what W. B. Yeats described as \u201cthe terrible beauty\u201d\u00a0 of that tumultuous year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-places"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}