Town Hall Clock - Sale, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 25.493 W 002° 19.185
30U E 545202 N 5919752
This large, but rather plain, clock stands at the top of Sale Town Hall, above the entrance.
Waymark Code: WMJN94
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/08/2013
Views: 2
Sale lies about 8 kilometres south west of the City of Manchester. Before the Industrial Revolution Sale was mainly farmland and owes its later development to Manchester.
Its fortunes started to change in 1765 when the Bridgewater Canal was built to connect Manchester to Runcorn and the canal passed through the centre of Sale. In fact the town hall is built next to the canal.
It was the arrival of a railway that connected to Manchester that really drove Sale's prosperity and the ease of travel to the industrial city turned Sale into a dormitory town for people who worked in Manchester.
The town hall was built in 1915 and then extended during the Second World War, re-opening in July 1940. However because of its proximity to Manchester Sale was bombed heavily in December and the Town Hall was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. Sale is now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford and this picture on a Trafford council website shows the shell of the town hall after the bomb damage.
link
There is no sign of a clock in the photo and I don't know whether it was destroyed in the bombing or whether the town hall didn't have a clock then.
The town hall wasn't repaired until 1952 and the clock was installed at that point. It is in a cream tower on the roof above the entrance, and surmounted by lead cupola.
The clock face is very plain with a white face. The hours are represented by simple black lines and have no numbers on them. The face has a thick black line round the outer edge of the face and a thinner inner line delimiting the hour lines. The hour and minute hands are also plain with no ornamentation and the there is no second hand.