Repaired clock tower unveiled after a year covered by white wrapping

Thursday, 27 April 2023

A year-long programme of conservation and maintenance work has finished for the Victoria Clock Tower in Christchurch.

A year-long “meticulous” repair to Christchurch’s heritage-listed Victoria Clock Tower has ended, allowing protective white wrapping to finally be removed from the 163-year-old structure.

Its ornate wrought iron detail has been repaired and repainted, upper timber structures have been repaired, and the gold surfaces have been stripped and re-gilded by hand, the Christchurch City Council said in a statement.

It also said “problematic areas” where water was getting in have had “protective membranes” applied to protect the tower from the elements.

The council’s head of vertical capital delivery, Darren Moses, said the work had extended the life of the clock tower “by several decades as a minimum”. It stands in the city centre, at the intersection of Montreal, Victoria, and Salisbury streets.

The work was done “so its beauty can be appreciated for years to come”, Moses said.

The “meticulous year-long programme of conservation and maintenance work” cost $170,000.

Gold surfaces were stripped and re-gilded by hand, the council says.

The work was labour-intensive and had several challenges caused by the clock tower’s footprint, height and age, he said.

“With six levels up, it’s quite a compact environment with up to 10 people on site so it’s been a matter of co-ordinating the spaces and the workflow,” he said.

This is what the clock tower looked like for a year as the Christchurch City Council worked on it.

The council had previously hoped to finish the work in August last year.

Moses said it took longer because of “additional intricate repairs” and the process to add gold requiring “extensive preparatory works”.

The clock tower was built in 1860 and has been considered a category 1 heritage place by Heritage New Zealand since 1985.

According to Heritage New Zealand, it was designed by Benjamin Mountfort to be placed on top of the original Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers, but it proved too heavy. It was instead placed in the courtyard of those chambers for four years.

In 1864, the tower went into storage and was not used again until 1897, when the council of the day made it a monument for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

It was erected on a stone base at the corner of Manchester, High and Lichfield streets. It remained there until 1930 – when it was shifted to its current position because it was seen as a traffic hazard.

Heritage New Zealand said the tower’s connection to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee made “explicit the link between colonial New Zealand and Victorian Britain”.