The Shepherd Gate Clock
Charles Shepherd (1830 to 1905) · 1852
Before you even enter the observatory, stop at the black and gold clock set into the wall by the gate. It looks ordinary until you count the numbers on the dial: there are twenty four of them, not twelve, so the hour hand goes round only once a day and points straight down at noon. This was the first clock ever to show Greenwich Mean Time directly to the public, and for Londoners in the eighteen fifties it was a small wonder, a way to set their watches by the official time of the nation.
The clock has no mechanism of its own. It is a slave dial, driven by electric pulses from a master clock inside the observatory that Charles Shepherd, a London clockmaker, installed in eighteen fifty two. The same master clock sent signals down telegraph wires to railway stations, to the post office and to other cities, and it dropped the time ball on the roof of Flamsteed House. This was the beginning of standardised time in Britain, the moment when every town stopped keeping its own local time from the sun. Look beneath the dial at the brass bars and studs in the wall: these are the public standards of length, the official yard, foot and inch, so that anyone could check a ruler against them.
The dial was hit by a bomb in nineteen forty and repaired, and it has been running almost continuously since the reign of Queen Victoria. It still shows Greenwich Mean Time all year, which means that in summer it appears an hour slow to visitors who forget about daylight saving. It makes a good photograph, and the standards of length below are a reminder that Greenwich was not only about time but about measurement of every kind.
Did You Know? The Shepherd Gate Clock shows Greenwich Mean Time all year round, so in summer it disagrees with every watch in the queue by exactly one hour.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.