The clock gracing the front of Britomart Station’s Chief Post Office will soon be removed and fixed by a specialist clock repairer in Auckland.
The clock was not an original feature of the Chief Post Office. Costing 321 pounds and 10 shillings, the dual-faced Magneta clock was added to its Lower Queen Street facade on 4 July 1938. The Auckland Star newspaper heralded it a “handsome addition to Auckland’s timepieces”.
It appears not to have been the most reliable of time-keepers, having often displayed the wrong time or stopped working altogether.
National Library records show it refused to work when initially “owing to the hands being out of balance and to the failure of the mechanism to synchronise with that of numerous other small clocks on the same electrically controlled system throughout the CPO building”.
Once it’s received its internal makeover, the clock will be safely stored before being reinstated at the completion of the CRL construction works at Britomart Station.
