Clock Tower

"...The Clock Tower..."

What do you think? Room Kauri thinks that the Clock Tower in the heart of Ashburton is very ancient and special.

It is handy also because it alerts us to the time by chiming it's bells.

Room Kauri sitting around the Clock Tower on the 17th October, 2008

HISTORY - of the Clock Tower

In 1863 a notice in the Provincial Government Gazette proclaimed

Ashburton a township. The river and the town were named after

Hon. William Baring (Lord Ashburton) a prominent member of the

first New Zealand Land Association founded by Wakefield in 1837.

The coat of arms used by the Ashburton Borough Council features

a bear's head taken from Lord Ashburton's family arms - the bear

with a muzzle represents the so-called sport of bear baiting, or

"bearing" and is a pun on Lord Ashburton's family name, Baring,

which is also given to the towns central square where the clock

tower is.

Our Wonderful Clock Tower

This clock tower commemorates the first 100 years of County Government.

The Clock originally installed in the old Post Office in 1904 was restored by the

Ashburton Lions Club in November 1976.

The architects were Warren and Mahoney and the contractors were Bradford Construction Ltd.

Hour chimes of the Ashburton Post Office clock. The chimes were arranged by Dr Crotch

in 1780 from an 'Aria' composed by G.F. Handel and are known as the Cambridge Chimes.

As a class we had lots of different questions we wanted to find out. We found it quite interesting to see what others thought compared to our own thoughts. It was a bit tricky as we found it hard to find a lot of information based on the clock tower. Taylor Mackenzie's (a girl in our class) grandad actually helped to build the clock tower so we were lucky enough to get information from him. We decided we would just take photos of our questions and results for you to see.

	What year was the clock tower built in? This was our next question. The children all predicted what they thought the year was that the clock tower could have been built in. It was very interesting to see that some answers were very close to the real thing. As a whole class we did think that the clock tower was a lot older than 32 years old. Some thought that is was as old as 100 years.
	We hope you have enjoyed all the information we found out about the Clock Tower. We have really enjoyed producing this page to go on to the internet. By Kauri (Room 5) December 2008.

Some of the children in Totara were also interested to learn more about Ashburton's Clock Tower.

The Ashburton Clock Tower commemorates the 100 years of county government.

The clock tower is 20.575m tall and 32years old

Architects: Warren and Mahoney

Contractors: Bradfords Construction co. Ltd

S.J Letham Chairman, November 1976

The top piece is made out of copper

A gift to Ashburton

Thomas and Ben scaled the model so it would be 1\10 the size of the clock tower

	Anna, Kahlia, Sophie, Libby and Victoria from Room Manuka also looked at the Clock Tower. This is the Venn Diagram we used to compare our model of the Ashburton's clock tower and the real one.
	This is the action plan we had to do before we began our project. Some parents took us to visit the clock tower and we took some awesome photos. This was awesome fun. We also wrote a letter to the Museum, and they told us that the the clock tower was first built because people didn't wear watches.