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The Clock Tower (sometimes called the Jubilee Clock Tower) is a free-standing
clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...
in the centre of
Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...
, part of the English city of
Brighton and Hove Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages. Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and ...
. Built in 1888 in commemoration of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, the distinctive structure included innovative structural features and became a landmark in the popular and fashionable seaside resort. The city's residents "retain a nostalgic affection" for it, even though opinion is sharply divided as to the tower's architectural merit. English Heritage has
listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
the clock tower at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.


History

The small fishing village of Brighthelmston was transformed into a fashionable
seaside resort A seaside resort is a town, village, or hotel that serves as a vacation resort and is located on a coast. Sometimes the concept includes an aspect of official accreditation based on the satisfaction of certain requirements, such as in the German ' ...
and thriving commercial centre after local doctor Richard Russell's treatise explaining the health-giving effects of drinking and bathing in seawater became a fad in the late 18th century. Royal patronage ensued— the Prince Regent (later King George IV) moved into a farmhouse which became the lavish
Royal Pavilion The Royal Pavilion, and surrounding gardens, also known as the Brighton Pavilion, is a Grade I listed former royal residence located in Brighton, England. Beginning in 1787, it was built in three stages as a seaside retreat for George, Princ ...
—and speculative residential and commercial development, encouraged by transport improvements, attracted large numbers of day-trippers, holidaymakers and new residents throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. By the 1780s, North Street had become established as an important shopping street, and its status as the commercial heart of Brighton grew over the next century. It first developed as a route in the 14th century, when it formed the medieval village's northern boundary, and ran from west to east from the end of the main route from London towards the Royal Pavilion and the seafront. West Street, the ancient western boundary of the settlement, ran southwards towards the beach and seafront; and Queen's Road was built straight through a slum area in 1845 to link the recently built railway station directly with the centre of Brighton. The western section of North Street was renamed Western Road in the 1830s to match the rest of that road, which was built as an access route to the high-class Brunswick Town estate but became the town's main shopping street by the 1860s (the remaining section of North Street was lined with offices and banks by this time). The roads were widened in the second half of the 19th century, and by 1880 the junction of North Street, Western Road, West Street and Queen's Road was a major landmark with a small, old waiting shelter in the middle. The site was ideal for redevelopment, and in 1881 a competition was held for a replacement building. Architects Henry Branch and Thomas Simpson were recorded as the winners, but their plans were never executed and the site stood vacant until 1888. Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 1887, and many towns built
Jubilee clock Jubilee clock is a term used in reference to a number of clocks constructed and erected throughout the British Empire in commemoration of the Golden or Diamond Jubilee of various British monarchs, most commonly, Queen Victoria's. England Bright ...
towers to commemorate the occasion. A local advertising contractor, James Willing,Some sources give his name as John Willing. decided to commission one for Brighton. He donated £2,000. The town organised an architectural competition which was won by a London-based architect, John Johnson. The tower was completed at the start of 1888 and was unveiled on 20 January 1888 on Willing's 70th birthday. Local inventor Magnus Volk—responsible for Britain's oldest surviving electric railway, an eccentric sea-based railway line, a pioneering electric car and Brighton's first telephone link—designed a time ball for the clock tower soon after it opened. The hydraulically operated copper sphere moved up and down a metal mast every hour, based on electrical signals transmitted from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The feature was disabled after a few years because of complaints about the noise it caused. The tower was the focal point of several bursts of anti-Victorian sentiment in Brighton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; as such it fulfilled a similar function to the
Albert Memorial The Albert Memorial, directly north of the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington Gardens, London, was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her beloved husband Prince Albert, who died in 1861. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the Gothic R ...
in London's Kensington Gardens, which was occasionally the scene of similar local and national demonstrations. The tower is acknowledged as one of Brighton's main landmarks (although its impact has been affected by intrusive
street furniture Street furniture is a collective term for objects and pieces of equipment installed along streets and roads for various purposes. It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traffic ...
), and it has been described as "the hub of modern Brighton". The "nostalgic affection" felt by the city's population towards the structure, and the difficulty of demolishing or removing it without great expense, have ensured its survival despite demands (occasionally vociferous) for its destruction. Criticism by architectural historians has sometimes been intense, although others have praised the tower.
Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, '' The Buildings of England'' ( ...
and
Ian Nairn Ian Douglas Nairn (24 August 1930 – 14 August 1983) was a British architectural critic who coined the word "Subtopia" to indicate drab suburbs that look identical through unimaginative town-planning. He published two strongly personalised criti ...
dismissed it as "worthless", and it has been likened to "a giant salt-cellar"; but its idiosyncratic appeal has prompted descriptions such as "charmingly ugly" and "extremely charming and delightful", and the most recent academic study of the city's architecture acclaimed it as "supremely confident and showy". The Clock Tower was
listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...
at Grade II by English Heritage on 26 August 1999. This status is given to "nationally important buildings of special interest". As of February 2001, it was one of 1,124 Grade II-listed buildings and structures, and 1,218 listed buildings of all grades, in the city of
Brighton and Hove Brighton and Hove () is a city and unitary authority in East Sussex, England. It consists primarily of the settlements of Brighton and Hove, alongside neighbouring villages. Often referred to synonymously as Brighton, the City of Brighton and ...
.


Architecture

The Clock Tower is a Classical-style structure with
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including th ...
touches. It rises to , and the mast for Volk's time ball adds a further . The four clock faces have a diameter of . and are inscribed on the clock faces. The square base is of pink granite, as are the Corinthian columns on each shaft; the rest of the structure is of Portland stone. On each side, the tapering columns rise part way up the shaft and are topped by pediments with open bases, below which is elaborately carved scrollwork and a protuberance designed to resemble the gunwale of a ship. Incised lettering on each ship indicates where they are pointing: clockwise from north, they show , , and . Below these, each side has an arched recess containing a medallion-style mosaic portrait of a member of the Royal Family. At the corners of the base, there are carved stone statues of female figures. Above the pediments, the rusticated stone walls are decorated with pilasters, narrow round-headed recesses and a
frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...
formed by enclosed
baluster A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its cons ...
s. Pevsner saw
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
elements in the design of this section. Above the frieze, an ornate
cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...
with turrets at each corner is topped by a dome with a copper fish-scale roof, the time ball and a weather-vane topped with James Willing's initials. There had once been public toilets under the structure. File:Prince Consort - geograph.org.uk - 874171.jpg, Portrait of Albert, Prince Consort File:Prince of Wales - geograph.org.uk - 874167.jpg, Portrait of
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and ...
, later King Edward VII File:Princess of Wales - geograph.org.uk - 874172.jpg, Portrait of the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra File:Queen Victoria - geograph.org.uk - 874164.jpg, Portrait of Queen Victoria


See also

* Grade II listed buildings in Brighton and Hove: C–D


References


Notes


Sources


Bibliography

* * * * * {{Authority control Towers completed in 1888 Clock towers in the United Kingdom Monuments and memorials to Queen Victoria Grade II listed buildings in Brighton and Hove Grade II listed monuments and memorials Monuments and memorials in East Sussex Time balls
Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...