A historic Ramsbottom church is getting ready to turn its clock back tomorrow, Sunday (October 26).
St Paul’s Church is a beautiful Grade II listed building right at the heart of the town centre.
Clocks will go back by one hour overnight, marking the start of winter in the UK.
While most of us let technology take charge of making sure our own clocks are automatically updated each year, wardens at St Paul’s Church will be making the change manually.
The clock mechanism requires constant adjustment due to its age.
It is reached by two vertical climbs up a ‘ladder’ consisting of holes cut into the wall via a trapdoor into a confined space.
Ryan Salter has been a warden at the Church of England (CoE) church, which marked its 175th anniversary this year, for around 18 months.
He said: “To make the change, we have to climb up the town and stop the clock for an hour using the old mechanisms.
“We let it go again at the correct time. It’s important to get it right as it aligns with the chimes.”
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The clock change will bring darker days, an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning and a time zone shift from British Summer Time (BST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Every year, the clocks “fall” back an hour at 2am on the last Sunday of October.
This is also known as moving from Daylight Saving Time to Daylight Standard Time.
When the clocks go back, the sun rises and sets an hour earlier, shifting our sunlight from evenings to mornings.
Sunrises will start later as the UK builds towards the darkest day of the year, known as the winter solstice, meaning daily sunlight gradually decreases.
The winter solstice will occur on December 21, after which days will get gradually longer again.
The Summer Time Act 1916 was introduced during the First World War, when the UK needed to make as much use of daylight as possible to conserve coal.
The time zone has changed twice since British Double Summertime was introduced from 1939 to 1945 to increase productivity during the Second World War.
Harold Wilson’s government trialled British Standard Time from 1968 until 1971, which saw clocks move forward an hour but not return back.
