How come so many clocks around Christchurch don’t tell the right time?

Saturday, 13 June 2026

It was a bright cold day in June, and the clocks in Christchurch were striking thirteen. Or 11. Or 3.30. Or nothing at all because they hadn’t moved since no-one can remember when.

Christchurch, it seems, has a timekeeping problem. The Press conducted an unofficial audit of public-facing clocks around the city and found only three that told the right time. One more was fixed after we inquired, but seven others remain fully or partly wrong.

It might not signal the arrival of an Orwellian dystopia, but if a clock’s primary function is to align with our own understanding of our temporal selves, then Christchurch is trapped in some sort of metaphysical crisis. Our objective, shared reality shattered. Or at least running late.

Geoff Butler might be our saviour. The proprietor at Ilam Watchmakers maintains the clock in the Clock Tower Building at the Arts Centre, one of the few we found that kept impeccable time.

“A lot of these tower clocks do need regular maintenance,” he said. “We oil them up and change them for daylight saving time.”

The Arts Centre clock was due for a fuller service, he said. “We just noticed last week that one of the bearings is starting to wear. We feel that it’s time to dismantle the movement [the mechanism that keeps time].”

Back at the workshop, the service would include: “checking all the bearings and pivots of all the wheels, polishing all the pivots, and replacing bearings when necessary”.

That it still works at all is something of a marvel. The Clock Tower clock was installed in 1878, a year after the building itself was finished. Weighing 214kg, its bell chimed in E-flat to remind Canterbury College students the next lecture was about to begin. The building was badly damaged in the 2010-11 earthquakes, but one of the first in the precinct to be restored afterwards. During that process, the clock’s makers Gillett & Johnston came from the UK to refurbish it. While it now worked well, an Arts Centre spokesperson said the clock had to be reset “once a month or so” to stay on time.

Do you know of another faulty public-facing clock in Christchurch we’ve missed? If so, email michael.wright@press.co.nz

This is Butler’s job. It is the only large clock he maintains in Christchurch, although he also services the one atop the Timaru District Council building and the Blenheim Clock Tower. (He also got the two clocks in Riverside Market up and running. Both dials are from the old train station clock tower on Moorhouse Ave and now work with GPS and an electronic movement. As of this week, both were displaying perfect time.)

He sometimes hears from members of the public about other clocks around the city that are out of time. The Christchurch City Council is the main custodian of many of these. They include the Edmonds Clock Tower, donated to the city by baking powder tycoon Thomas Edmonds in 1929, which sits on the bank of the Avon River by the Margaret Mahy playground. It was repaired after the earthquakes, but for now is emphatically unoperational, its two faces stuck on 7.10.

The Victoria Clock Tower, perhaps the most prominent in the city ‒ it was built in 1860, moved several times and shifted to its current spot in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee ‒ suffered similarly in the quakes. It was reinstated soon afterwards and repaired again in 2023 but its time-telling has been an ongoing question. Earlier this month it was displaying the wrong time, but was corrected last week.

The New Brighton clock tower, which dates to the 1930s, fared little better. It was restored in 2020 after years of post-quake disrepair. Both it and the Sumner Scarborough clock tower have grappled with their core functionality after recent restorations. In 2020, the council said issues with the mechanisms in both caused accuracy problems. As of this week, the Scarborough clock is displaying the correct time. One of New Brighton’s four faces was well out but the other three were all within a few minutes of the correct time.

The floral clock in Victoria Square, though unwieldy as a timepiece, was accurate when The Press visited. The same could not be said for the Upham Memorial Clock Tower in Lyttelton. “It offered a wide range of times,” said Press photographer Kai Schwoerer, who viewed it this week. “None were correct.” The digital clock on the Cycle Counter Display by the Antigua Boat sheds, which appeared to be the victim of a daylight saving fail, is in fact 1 hour and 7 minutes fast.

A council spokesperson said the older clocks in particular could be difficult to maintain. “[They] are all bespoke structures of significant age that rely on intricate mechanical pieces to operate. Limited parts are available when required so often they need to be engineered…We have an arrangement with a local electrical technician who specialises in the maintenance of clocks of this nature.”

On the question of timekeeping: “We have a staff member dedicated to monuments and structures across our parks who keeps an eye on them. We also receive regular feedback from the community if they are not operating to the correct time.”

This oversight doesn’t apply to privately owned but public-facing clocks. The Press identified three and found them all wanting. The clock tower at 1 Normans Rd, between the train tracks and the Elmwood Tavern has four faces, all differently wrong. Although technically the one stuck on about 11.30 is correct twice a day.

Real estate agent Cameron Bailey, who is among the owners of the property, confessed he didn’t know the clocks were wrong. He was keen to have it righted, though, he said. Perhaps when the back of the site was developed, which was in the works. “I think they’re quite cool,” he said. “Lots of real estate offices have clocks. We’ve got one at [Harcourts] Papanui and I always notice it.”

The outlook was less promising for the old Hornby Clock Tower building clock. The modernist building that once held the clock was demolished after the earthquakes. The clock ‒ very likely the same one ‒ survived, and now sits at ground level. Alas, neither of the two times it displays is correct.

“We love to preserve history, which is why we have kept the clock,” a Peebles Group spokesperson said. “We are unsure when it was last working.”

“We would love to get the clock working again and have engaged a specialist on a few occasions, however they have not been able to get the clock operational.”

If that sounds grim, it’s nothing on the prognosis for the moribund timepiece atop 2 New Regent St. If you have been in its vicinity over the last decade and a half at around ten to 6, don’t be fooled ‒ it always says that. John and Ann Douglas from Balclutha, have owned the building since the 1980s. The clock ‒ like so many others in the city ‒ worked well before the earthquakes.

“We’ll definitely get it re-done up, that’s for sure,” John Douglas said. “You’ve given me an impetus to get onto it.”

Until then, it will continue to both matter on a deep, existential level and not make the slightest bit of difference that these clocks don’t work. No-one really needs them to tell the time. But if they’re there, shouldn’t they?

“They’re well worth keeping and restoring,” Butler said. “But you’re always going to have a problem with a 100-year-old clock.”