Tide Clock - Minster Church of St Margaret, Saturday Market Place, King's Lynn, Norfolk. PE30 5DL
Posted by: 
greysman
N 52° 45.096 E 000° 23.702
31U E 324194 N 5847820
A reproduction of a C17th tide clock on the south-west tower of the minster.
Waymark Code: WMY4D5
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/18/2018
Views: 2
The Kings Lynn Benedictine Priory was founded in 1101 by Bishop Losinga of Norwich and is now a Grade I listed parish church.
The three-stage south-west tower was complete to the ringing chamber by c1260 with bundled buttresses on a high plinth, Norman interlace to the lower stages gives way to trefoiled C13th arcading, then to two-light ringing chamber windows, terminating in bar tracery of the C14th belfry stage, capped with a crenellated parapet with pinnacles. The front of each buttress has eleven shafts of alternating thick and thin design, a typically East Anglian motif. It leans quite a lot as it was built on poor foundations, this can be seen best inside the church. There was a spire on this tower but it blew down in a storm in 1741 resulting in the rebuilding of 1742-6.
On the west face of the south-west tower is a Moon or Tide clock originally dating from c1690. It is a faithful C20th reproduction of the original clock made by clockmaker and churchwarden Thomas Tue and shows the phases of the moon, and with a green dragon's tongue the time of the next high tide on the River Great Ouse. Being so high in the tower it was easily visible from the port and the river. The letters in 'LYNN HIGH TIDE' are arranged on the even hours, two hours apart starting with the 'L' at 12 o'clock, 'G' at midnight and with dots and triangles the odd hours, thus a 24-hour dial.
The dragon pointer of the clock completes a full rotation every 29.5 days. If the pointer indicated a high tide at "H" (2 a.m.), then the opposite mark ("Y") would be almost the time (within 25 minutes) of the next high tide. A mechanism also controls the moon that revolves eccentrically behind a hole and indicates, by its position, the lunar phases. The blue inner disc is fixed to the dragon pointer.
Tue's original clock was damaged when the church's spire collapsed in the September 1741 storm, and was poorly maintained thereafter, eventually falling into disuse. This reconstruction was made under the direction of the architect, Colin Shewring, and is a fascinating reminder of the early technology that sailors used.
Words variously from British Listed Buildings, Pevsner's Norfolk Buildings, Harris's Guide to Churches and Cathedrals, Jenkins England's Thousand Best Churches, amended and added to with own on-site observations.
Co-ordinates are for the west porch.