Tales of London

‘Aquatic Horologist’ isn’t one of those jobs that was suggested to you by your career advisor at school. But if you take a walk through Covent Garden you can find a plaque celebrating two such engineers, next to a rather magnificent timepiece.

Short’s Gardens is one of the seven streets that radiates from Seven Dials, and is named after the Short family who owned a house here in the seventeenth century. Above the Holland & Barrett store at 21-23 Short’s Gardens is a clock face with only an hour hand, and various contraptions emanating therefrom. Commissioned in 1981, possibly as a means of attracting customers to the wholefoods shop that once stood at the site, it was designed by Tim Hunkin and Andy Plant: the aforementioned aquatic horologists.

A clear tube underneath the clock slowly fills with water, with markings denoting the minutes past the hour. When the tube reaches the full hour, water from a tank on the roof pours down from above the clock through several buckets, chiming the bells as it flows. Six green characters at the bottom tip their watering cans, causing flowers to sprout forth from the window box – the flowers being on floats, which rise as the window box fills with water from the tube. The flowers are possibly an homage to when there was a flower market in Covent Garden.

For many years the clock face was stuck at one, but in summer of 2018 it was restored to full working order. If you’re in the Covent Garden area it’s well worth taking a detour to check out this rather quirky timekeeper. Just don’t stand too close: the left hand figure has a habit of swivelling outwards and emptying the contents of his watering can onto the pavement below.

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