Bournemouth College's Lansdowne clock is back on time (From Thisisdorset)

Bournemouth College's Lansdowne clock is back on time

11:00am Friday 3rd September 2010 in

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A BOURNEMOUTH landmark is back in action for the first time in years after being repaired and restored by a local expert.

Horologist Paul Kilburn’s four weeks of work at Bournemouth College’s Lansdowne clock tower has been a real labour of love.

“It’s been a massive job. It would usually take a week, but because it hasn’t been working for six years, it was in a poor state,” he said.

He has given the clock a thorough cleaning and converted it from hand-wound to electric. A regulator on the pendulum is linked to a satellite to keep the time as accurate as possible.

Each face of the tower contained a cast iron skeleton dial infilled with 47 pieces of opal glass. On the side facing Christchurch Road, Paul found all the glass was broken. He had to abseil off the tower to smash out the shattered pieces, which have now been replaced with acrylic.

“The (old) Metropole Hotel was where Royal London House is. I reckon when the bomb fell on the hotel (in the Second World War), it broke the glass on the dial,” he said.

“What else would do that when the other three dials are almost perfect?”

Paul, 37, who lives in Boscombe, grew up in the area and went to the college in the early 1990s to study hotel and catering. He worked at the Haven Hotel in Poole, leaving for a job on the QE2 cruise liner.

He became a butler on the ship, looking after celebrities including Dean Martin, Rod Stewart and Selina Scott, before returning home to another change of career.

After another three years of study, he joined mastercraftsmen Smith of Derby, which made the clocks for Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral. He now looks after hundreds of clocks in the counties south of the M4 and the Channel Islands.

Although his favourite clock is the one at St John’s Church in Bournemouth, made by Smith in 1887, he is a big fan of the Lansdowne clock.

“I love it. I’m tickled pink that I’ve done it.

“It’s been a great honour and privilege.

“I feel I know it intimately now.

“It’s very special and I’m hoping the college will be able to raise the money to get the other dials done.”