York Clock Group: Inside York's clocks from BST to GMT

John Cossins, a dedicated volunteer with the York Clock Group, is one of eight individuals entrusted with maintaining York's clocks.

Transcript

00:00My name's John, I'm from the York Clock Group, and we're located at Terry's Chocolate Factory.

00:05And here we've got a quite an unusual electric clock, 100 years old, drives four 8-foot dials,

00:15very similar to a church clock that you've probably seen before, but this one's

00:20rare because it's electric. It's made in 1920s, built by Gents of Leicester, a long

00:27disappeared company that made many electrical things over the years. Occasionally you still

00:31see their name on fire alarms. And we're approaching the end of the month, so I'll

00:37be here again in about a week's time to retard the clock by an hour, and of course we'll be

00:43back on to GMT, and that's winter time. Yes, it's open three days in the year,

00:50and that's organised by some volunteers in a group called York Unlocked, and they open

00:56various buildings throughout the city twice a year, and this is one of them. You have to

01:01have a ticket, and there's always quite a demand, and we are limited a little bit because of the

01:05number of people allowed in the lift, and because it's a residential building.

01:10So the next time it'll be open will be June 2025.