Village timekeeperĪt a time when few people possessed watches, the clock installed in the Dinorwig Quarry workshops was a timekeeper for its surrounding community, with its bell being audible to most of those living in and around Llanberis. Today the clock works smoothly and to a good degree of accuracy. The clock was then reassembled, brought back to the Museum and commissioned. The mechanism ended up being returned to the Joyce workshops where it was cleaned and serviced. Unfortunately, they have no records of individual clocks manufactured, but were prepared to visit the Museum to inspect the clock. They were established at Whitchurch in Shropshire, and are still there over three hundred years later. Joyce and Company, the manufacturers, were still in existence. Cleaning the clockĪlthough well cared for over the years, by 2001 the clock required specialist attention. On June 10, 1909, for example, Willie Owen Williams and George Hughes charged the batteries. One of the discoveries made when renovating this part of the building, in the mid-1990s, was the original graffiti on adjacent walls and panels noting the dates of battery charges. This was supplied via wet cells, or accumulators, stored alongside the clock. 100-year-old graffitiĪ power supply was required to provide the electrical signals. At Dinorwig, however, a home-made, reliable solution was produced. They were sold by well-known makers such as Gent, Leicester. Such systems were usually marketed as 'pulsynetic clocks'. This was to ensure that blasting happened on time. At set intervals the clock transmitted an electrical signal to other parts of the Quarry's large site. At some stage in its life, a series of electrical connections were added. The clock was more than simply a timekeeper for the workshops though. The clock helped ensure the trains taking slate from the quarry to the Company's port at Port Dinorwic were always on time. The Museum is located within the Victorian workshops of the Dinorwig Quarry. Early photographs of the building, erected in 1870, do not show the clock, so it was probably not installed until the mid-1890s Timekeeper for quarry explosions It was manufactured in Shropshire but it is not possible to read the date. The mechanism is installed on the second floor of the building. On the roofline above it is a small pagoda-like structure containing a bell and hammer, connected to the clock by a wire rope. The clock above the entrance to the Welsh Slate MuseumĪ distinctive feature of the National Slate Museum building is the diamond-shaped face of a clock on the front of the Museum.
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