‘Great Abel’ visible for the first time in years

Manchester Town Hall’s historic and iconic clock tower is visible for the first time in years after a loving restoration.

The 85m (280ft) tower had been shrouded in scaffolding until recently as part of the multi-million-pound restoration of the Victorian grade-I listed Town Hall, which closed in 2018.

Great Abel

The clock face was restored in summer 2021, when 140 years of Mancunian grime and rain were meticulously cleaned off.

Preservation work took place on the cast iron dials, glass panels, and eight-tonne bell — officially called Great Abel — have all been made to look like new, as has the 23-carat gold hour markers.

“The Town Hall clock has been keeping the time for Mancunians since New Year’s Day 1879 and its prominent tower has watched over the city for even longer,” said deputy council leader Garry Bridges on announcing the ‘milestone moment’.

“As part of the once-in-a-century Our Town Hall project to repair and restore the town hall and safeguard it for future generations, we’ve taken the opportunity to bring it back to its original glory. It’s great that we’ve now reached a stage where we have been able to remove the scaffolding and restore the view of the clock tower, giving a foretaste of the whole building being returned to the people of Manchester in magnificent shape.”

Gillet and Bland

The clock, made by master clockmakers Gillet and Bland, is the largest of its design ever made and remains one of the country’s biggest and most significant tower clocks.

Currently, the hour and minute hands are connected to a temporary drive while work to clean and repair the original clock mechanism is completed off-site ahead of its re-installation, set to go ahead once works to the rest of the clock tower are complete.

Work concludes on the tower’s impressive Carillion

Work is also concluding on the clock tower’s impressive Carillon, a set of 23 bells with which tunes can be played.

This was previously not working reliably, and restricted to playing a small repertoire of tunes automatically controlled by a pianola-style punchcard Once its restoration is complete it will be possible to play any tune on it, opening up a wealth of possibilities.

As well as general wear-and-tear, the clock underwent a major shock in 1941, after shockwaves from a Second World War bomb caused the glass to smash. The Town Hall restoration project is the largest of its kind in the country, and is being studied by the teams in charge of restoring the Houses of Parliament.