The above picture was taken yesterday while attending a Hull Trade’s Council public event in Queens Gardens, Hull. Fortunately the event was blessed by the continuing fine weather and the atmosphere was really pleasant – not overcrowded and not over commercialised. A programme of poetry reading, speeches and music bands and solo artists was free to sit and listen to throughout the afternoon. Well done Hull Trades Council.
The above photo shows, in the background, the tower of Hull’s Guildhall building. At the top of the tower is a vertical pole which is the stem of the Guildhall’s Time Ball (the picture has to be enlarged to see it). The present Guildhall was built in 1914 and designed to compliment the collection of public buildings along Alfred Gelder Street, themselves a result of a town improvement act of 1897. The tower was specifically designed to accommodate the Time Ball and ‘is thought to be the only tower in the country that has been designed specifically to accommodate a Greenwich Time Ball’ (quote from a current leaflet co-printed by Hull City Council and Historic England). ‘Time Balls provided a means for accurately setting ship chronometers, a task that was vital to ensure accurate navigation at sea’, (a further quote from the leaflet), this, presumably, referring to the calculation of longitude at sea by comparing, at any given point, local time with Greenwich Mean Time, the necessary ship’s chronometer still similar to that pioneered by John Harrison of Barrow on Humber, north Lincolnshire, back in the 18th century.
So how did the Time Ball work and why is it having to be restored?, see tomorrow.