| Time Ball Buildings, Leeds | |
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| General information | |
| Address | 24, 25 and 26, Briggate, Leeds |
| Town or city | Leeds |
| Coordinates | 53°47′43.79″N1°32′33.77″W / 53.7954972°N 1.5427139°W |
| Designations | Grade II* listed [1] |
Time Ball Buildings, Leeds is a Grade II* listed building in Briggate, Leeds, England.
The building dates from the early 19th century and was used by a variety of businesses, acting as a distillery, saddlery, barber and perfumier and stationer. By 1869 the premises were uninhabited. By 1870 [2] a watchmaker by the name of John Dyson [3] occupied No. 26. By 1882 he occupied No.s 24 and 25 as well. [4]
The elaborately decorated front dates over numbers 25 and 26 dates from 1872 and over 26 from 1900. The distinctive features of the building are the gilded time ball, and the cantilevered clock, surmounted by a figure of Father Time carved by John Wormald Appleyard. A second clock by Potts of Leeds was installed in 1910.
Perhaps inspired by the model of the time ball at Greenwich installed in 1875 by Potts of Leeds in their shop window in Guildford Street [5] the gilded time ball mechanism was installed in 1877. [6] It had a connection to the time equipment at Greenwich and the time ball dropped at exactly 1 pm each day.
The building was restored in 1993.
A time ball or timeball is a time-signalling device. It consists of a large, painted wooden or metal ball that is dropped at a predetermined time, principally to enable navigators aboard ships offshore to verify the setting of their marine chronometers. Accurate timekeeping is essential to the determination of longitude at sea.
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Briggate is a pedestrianised principal shopping street in Leeds city centre, England. Historically it was the main street, leading north from Leeds Bridge, and housed markets, merchant's houses and other business premises. It contains many historic buildings, including the oldest in the city, and others from the 19th and early-20th century, including two theatres. It is noted for the yards between some older buildings with alleyways giving access and Victorian shopping arcades, which were restored in late 20th century. The street was pedestrianised in the late-20th century.
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Potts of Leeds was a major British manufacturer of public clocks, based in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.
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William Swinden Barber FRIBA, also W. S. Barber or W. Swinden Barber, was an English Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts architect, specialising in modest but finely furnished Anglican churches, often with crenellated bell-towers. He was based in Brighouse and Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire. At least 15 surviving examples of his work are Grade II listed buildings, including his 1875 design for the Victoria Cross at Akroydon, Halifax. An 1864 portrait by David Wilkie Wynfield depicts him in Romantic garb, holding a flower. He served in the Artists Rifles regiment in the 1860s alongside Wynfield and other contemporary artists.
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Charles Mawer (1839–1903) was an architectural sculptor, based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. He was the son of sculptors Robert and Catherine Mawer and the cousin of William Ingle. He was apprenticed to his father, and worked within the partnership Mawer and Ingle alongside his cousin William and his own mother between 1860 and 1871, and then ran the stone yard himself until he formed a partnership with his fellow-apprentice Benjamin Payler in 1881. Following that date, his whereabouts and death are unknown. His last major work for Mawer and Ingle was Trent Bridge, where he carved alone, following the death of William Ingle. He is noted for his work on the rebuilding of the mediaeval Church of St Michael and All Angels, Barton-le-Street, completed in 1871, where he repaired and recreated damaged and missing Romanesque carvings, and for his carving on William Swinden Barber's 1875 Church of St Matthew, Lightcliffe. Charles' last known work ornaments another Barber church: the 1880 Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Killinghall. Charles was a member of the Mawer Group of Leeds architectural sculptors, which included those mentioned above, plus Matthew Taylor.
Benjamin Payler, , was a sculptor, stone and marble mason. He was apprenticed to Catherine Mawer, alongside fellow apprentices Matthew Taylor and Catherine's son Charles Mawer. He formed a business partnership at 50 Great George Street with Charles Mawer in 1881. There is no known record of Charles after that. Payler continued to run the business there under his own name. In his day, he was noted for his 1871 bust of Henry Richardson, the first Mayor of Barnsley, his keystone heads on the 1874 Queen's Hotel in the same town, and his architectural sculpture on George Corson's 1881 School Board offices, Leeds. Payler was a member of the Mawer Group, which included the above-mentioned sculptors, plus William Ingle.
John Wormald Appleyard was a British sculptor and monumental mason based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
