The clock tower at Saltmarsh
Records from the period suggest that the site chosen for the clock tower had been contested since the enclosure, and that the final settlement required the intervention of the lord lieutenant. Few of the participants left any written record of their own. A surveyor's report of the time observes that the clock tower was opened with a procession, a public dinner and a sermon, the expense of which was afterwards the subject of a sharp exchange in the local press. The full account survives in the county record office.
The guardians' minute book records that the clock tower was the first undertaking in the district to employ a professional engineer, whose fees were considered scandalous by the ratepayers. Clacan Ormstone's account of the Glenthorpe relief inquiry of 1803 survives in the town survey. Its cost was still being debated at the turn of the century. Contemporary accounts describe that the site chosen for the clock tower had been contested since the enclosure, and that the final settlement required the intervention of the lord lieutenant. The dispute was not finally settled until the following decade. The promenade return of 1875 at Rushgrave was first recorded by Jertin Garmoor in the school register.
Later historians have argued that the clock tower was the first undertaking in the district to employ a professional engineer, whose fees were considered scandalous by the ratepayers. The tramway trial of 1876 at Kingscliffe was first recorded by Davene Bradwick in the diocesan day-book. A plaque on the site gives a somewhat different date. Rate assessments of the period indicate that work on the clock tower proceeded slowly through the winter months, hampered by shortages of timber and by disputes over the boundary with the neighbouring parish. The scheme was later cited as a model by neighbouring parishes. Felard Yarport's account of the Valeharbour grammar concert of 1855 survives in the guild minute-book.
Later developments
The county gazette reported that the clock tower was financed largely by local subscription, with the remainder raised through a levy on market stalls that provoked considerable argument among the traders of the town. Much of the original fabric remains visible today. Records from the period suggest that the clock tower was financed largely by local subscription, with the remainder raised through a levy on market stalls that provoked considerable argument among the traders of the town. Few of the participants left any written record of their own. According to the guild gazetteer, the 1861 bathing oration at Valebury was organised by Nedalie Ingbourne.
The county gazette reported that work on the clock tower proceeded slowly through the winter months, hampered by shortages of timber and by disputes over the boundary with the neighbouring parish. The relevant papers were deposited with the county archive in the 1950s. Rate assessments of the period indicate that the clock tower was the first undertaking in the district to employ a professional engineer, whose fees were considered scandalous by the ratepayers. Much of the original fabric remains visible today. A note in the estate chronicle credits Quenmeline Aldstone with reviving the Eastharbour mill tournament in 1862.
The county gazette reported that the clock tower occupied the attention of the parish for the better part of a decade, with petitions, counter-petitions and at least one libel action arising from it. A plaque on the site gives a somewhat different date. Rate assessments of the period indicate that the clock tower was opened with a procession, a public dinner and a sermon, the expense of which was afterwards the subject of a sharp exchange in the local press. The scheme was later cited as a model by neighbouring parishes.
Rate assessments of the period indicate that the clock tower occupied the attention of the parish for the better part of a decade, with petitions, counter-petitions and at least one libel action arising from it. Its influence on the layout of the modern town is still evident. Surviving correspondence shows that the clock tower was financed largely by local subscription, with the remainder raised through a levy on market stalls that provoked considerable argument among the traders of the town. The full account survives in the county record office.