St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church, Gosberton
In a glass display case in the south transept is the old mechanism of the tower clock.
How old is the clock mechanism?
A newspaper article in 1961 suggests it dated from the 17th century, though other articles from the 1960s are not so specific, stating it was ‘over 200 years old,’ or ‘at least 200 years old.’
Restoration in the 1930s
A brass plate on it states that this “ancient turret clock of Gosberton Church was restored and modernised by Alfred Minnis of Spalding 1936”
It was in 1934 when Mr. Minnis agreed to work on repairing the clock, and in that year it was taken down. Mr. Minnis spent hundreds of hours, over a period of nearly two years, working on it, making new parts, working in gun metal, brass and best silver steel. Mr. Minnis confessed it would have been easier to make a new clock, but he was keen to preserve the old features. His dedication and patience was repaid with much gratitude, to the extent that the then Vicar, Reverend Ivor S. Bennett, had the brass plate commemorating the restoration added to the mechanism.
When was it removed from the tower?
In 1968 the clock stopped working. Up to this point it had been wound up every day by Gosberton milkman Mr. Fred Payne (Before him, Mr. Robert Sellers had undertaken the task). That same year Mr. Len Windsor, a councillor and Gosberton businessman, took on the task of raising money to replace the mechanism with an electric one, thus avoiding the need to wind it up every day. (Not weekly, as the sign on the display case suggests).
It was replaced by an electric motor in 1971, and this old mechanism was shortly afterwards encased as we see it today.
