MANY people in Newport will remember the unusual clock which used to stand in John Frost Square. But where did it come from, why was it created and what happened to it? Here we take a look back at the history of the clock.
The Garden Festival Clock – known as In the Nick of Time was a popular feature in Newport city centre, with many people watching when the clock would ‘collapse’ and reveal smoke or split apart to provide a show of skeletons, devils, cuckoos and angels on the hour almost every hour.
The 30ft stainless steel arch piece was designed by sculptor Andy Plant. The plan was for it to represent Newport at the Welsh Garden Festival in Ebbw Vale.
On Mr Plant’s website, he describes the clock as “The feature is a cross between a cuckoo clock and an expresso machine, it has been billed as the only ‘white knuckle’ clock in the world.
“Skeletons appear, smoke oozes from the cracks, several tons of steel fall apart and come to rest revealing the inhabitants asleep, a band of angel mechanics. A cuckoo wakes them, they start to rewind the clock weight, and the whole structure reforms itself ready for the next hour.”
Mr Plant created the structure in 1991 at a cost of £100,000. It first stood in Ebbw Vale’s Garden Festival on the site of the old steelworks and, following the closure of the festival, was dismantled and reassembled in its new home at Newport’s John Frost Square, where it lived until 2008 when it was removed and put into storage.
The time of the clock being in John Frost Square was tumultuous for the sculpture. It was an extremely popular visitor attraction, however, it was only designed to last the six months of the 1992 exhibition, so regularly needed costly repairs.
When it was initially removed, it was due to the planned regeneration of the square, but plans to bring it back were scuppered due to the recession.
In 2011, a report on the clock found its mechanisms had begun to fail and it would cost an estimated £59,000 to restore it to full working order.
St Modwen, developers working on the new Glan Llyn development, put in an offer to Newport City Council to have the basic structure put at the 600-acre development site.
The clock was put in place on the roundabout in 2015 where it remains today.
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