The old market building’s clock, installed originally in 1822, has two minute hands, just over 10 minutes apart, in order to show both Greenwich Mean Time and Bristol local time. This dual time-keeping became necessary with the proliferation of railways. Trains started to conform schedules nationwide, and England had to adopt a standardized railway time, something that had never been attempted before.
Many resisted Greenwich Mean Time, preferring to hold onto the hour their town had all agreed upon for centuries. The city of Bristol only officially adopted the standard time on 14 September 1852, five years after it was established. For those five years, when it was noon in Bristol, it was 12:10 p.m. by the railway clock. Accordingly, the two hands on the Bristol Exchange clock displayed times exactly 10 minutes apart. To this day, the clock has the GMT minute hand in red and the local one in black.
Question: If you wanted to catch a train to London at noon from Temple Meads what time would you have to remember it would pull out of the station?
Answer: AB:CD
Now make your way to N51 27.A (A+B+C) (A+B+C) W002 36.(A-B) B (D-C) to visit another famous Bristol time-piece, a short 10 minute walk away.
This was Bristol's first electrically-regulated clock, it is assumed it was made in order to show off the new technology at the time. The maker was one of the leading clock and instrument makers of his time. This being Bristol, he also made nautical chronometers.
Look carefully on the ground for a small brass plaque and send us the answer to the following question (no pictures of the plaque on the cache page please!).
Question: Whose clock was it?
Please feel free to log your find at the same time as messaging us, photos are encouraged but without spoilers please. We will check your answer and contact you if needed. Regrettably any logs that do not meet the above requirement will be deleted.
This is a city centre cache, driving and parking isn't recommended but there are metered spaces and car-parks nearby if you do need to drive.
Virtual Reward - 2017/2018
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.