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Listing: Memorial clock tower. 1926 for Davis
Green. Inscribed with verses from Annie Hilda Green's poem "The
Silverdale Clock Chimes". Note: this tower was built in the
garden of Ash Hill House for Davis Green (a local industrialist) as a
memorial to his first wife Annie Hilda Green who died in 1926. The
inscriptions are verses from her poem The Silverdale Clock Chimes.
(Listed 15 July 1999)
Comment: Ash Hill House was a large Victorian
pair of residences. It was knocked down in the 1960 and replaced
by a much smaller and rather dull house. But the very extensive
gardens remained and it was in these that this clock tower had been
built. Its chimes could be heard all round the district.
Nick Hogben writes: Annie Hilda Green was born in
Wandsworth on 29th March 1882 and married Davis Green in Silverdale,
Lancashire, on 20th April 1904. She died at Ash Hill House on 3rd.
July 1926. The poem, The Silverdale Clock Chimes, was written in
May 1925 and reads as follows:
A merry round
Of cheerful sound,
I mark the time
In tuneful rhyme.
| Sunday
Good people all
Praise God and pray,
Should ill befall
He'll be our stay.
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Monday
Do well thy work,
Brief is our span
Shun idle talk
It helps no man.
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| Tuesday
In storm our peace,
Our strength in stress,
Love holds us fast
Till warfare's past.
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Wednesday
The loving mind
Doth solace find
When days are ill
In loving still
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| Thursday
Blow wind, turn tide,
Fall rain, shine sun,
Joy doth abide
Where work's well done.
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Friday
Jesus our Lord
Hung on the Cross,
He shed his blood,
He died for us.
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Saturday
'Tis sweet to rest
'Neath summer sky
To watch the trees
Sway in the breeze.
ooOOoo
The gardens were designated as a conservation area.
This did not stop developers buying the whole site and applying for
planning permission to build houses all over it. Nor did it stop
the city council granting the planning permission. The developers
then saw fit to make a new application for considerably more houses.
But even the council baulked at that. So now the smaller number of
very large houses is being built. Many of the trees are being kept
but the character of the conservation area is entirely gone and its use
as a nature corridor very much reduced. But this listed building
is being restored and should, one day, start chiming again.
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