Aston Rowant Church clock
The clock in the tower of St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Aston Rowant was installed in 1876. Just recently it has become unreliable and is liable to stop without apparent reason so experts in all things to do with time keeping, came to overhaul, clean and inspect the clock.
They dismantled the clock and cleaned all the bearings, the frames and all the moving parts. It was during this cleaning process that damage was found to one of the gear wheels on the escapement drive; the teeth of the gear wheel were badly worn and misshapen, a most unusual fault – see the image below.
Clearly spares are not available so a new gear wheel will have to be made. This means the clock will be stopped for sometime; this should not be an excuse to be late for services.