HOW often have we arranged to meet a friend under the clock?

The lucky citizens of Southampton have had many clocks around the town to do just that with perhaps the most prominent being the Echo Clock in Above Bar, sadly, no longer there, as well as the Sayer clock and fountain now moved to Bitterne Park Triangle.

One of the more familiar clocks is the sundial located on the south side of the Bargate. It has been there since 1705 following instructions from the then Mayor, John Thurnburgh, and shows the local time which is six minutes after Greenwich. The arrival of the railways in the 1840s led to the introduction of standard time.

An unusual feature of this sundial is that it's located upside down with the number twelve at the bottom and the numbering running anti-clockwise. The reason being that we are in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, the numbers go in a clockwise direction.

At around the same time a sundial of the same design was placed on the south side of Holy Rood Church tower. This church also has its own unique time piece in the mechanical quarter jacks which strike the quarter hours. The figures are very old possibly dating from the 16th century.

There is also a clock on the west side of the tower of Holy Rood which because it is high up you do not get the sense of its real size - it's nearly five feet in diameter.

In earlier days, the accuracy of time was not so important.

North of the City is the Parish of St Nicolas, North Stoneham where the clock on the tower of the church was installed in the first half of the 17th Century with the novel feature that it has only one hand. This is not unusual for clocks of that period as, being in a then rural community, knowing the minutes would not have been essential. For those not able to see or read the clock face, the telling of time would be by hearing the tenor bell.

The original movement for the North Stoneham clock was understood to have been replaced between 1740 and 1750 and is one of the few located in its original tower. The tower included three bells in 1893 with a further bell being included in 1909.

The bells within our iconic four faced clock at the Civic Centre is a reminder of the endeavour and foresight of our civic leaders. Strangely enough the clock tower was not part of the original design when the west wing of the building was opened in 1933. The architect for the construction of the Civic Centre, Ernest Berry Webber, when constructing the clock tower, arranged for a large balloon to be raised at the site to ensure the tower could be seen from different parts of the city.

Today, the bells in the tower play the first verse of the hymn 'O God, our help in ages past..' every four hours during the day.

Not all time pieces have clock faces, an example of this could be said to be the time ball located on the roof of the South Western Hotel. This was installed by the London and South Western Railway and Harbour Board between 1904 and 1933 as a visible sign for nearby ships to regulate their chronometers.

It worked by way of receiving an electrical impulse from Greenwich at 10.00 am, the ball, some 5ft in diameter, would then drop down the mast. Prior to the mast and ball being on the South Western Hotel it was earlier located on the top of God's House Tower between the years 1888 to 1903.

A sun dial was erected in Andrew's Park to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII following the death of Queen Victoria, but this time piece has been of no value to the townsfolk of Southampton as the dial and gnomon which showed the time were stolen shortly after installation and have never been replaced.