8462

 

II  

Designated  

19/11/1990  

19/11/1990  

Clock Tower  

 

Powys  

Machynlleth  

 

 

274545  

300810  

 

Freestanding at the road junction of the A487 and A489 in the centre of the town.  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

 

Dated l873 and "erected by the inhabitants of the town and district of Machynlleth to commemorate the coming of age on the l5th July l873 of Viscount Castelreagh of Plas Machynlleth, Son of the 5th Marquess of Londonderry". Designed by Henry Kennedy, an Irish born architect at this time working as Bangor Diocesan architect. Erected on the site of the old Town Hall.  

High Victorian Gothic 3-stage square tower with spire; open to ground floor. Snecked grey rubble with cream coloured freestone dressings facing the greater part of the top and bottom stages. Freestone quoins to the middle stage which also has diagonal bands of Mansfield Red stone. The crowning octagonal crocketed spire with stone finial and ironwork weathervane rises from the square bellstage with corner tourelles each with their own iron finials; foliated cornice and implied machicolations below the clock faces. Narrow, stepped, Gothic lights to staircase below. At each corner at the base are griffins seated on tiny marble colonnettes, The lower stage is splayed out with fishscale and crenellated cornice. Each side has a tall gable with heavily foliated finials and roundels with heraldic emblems. Hoodmoulds and rosettes to arches with impost bands and unpolished marble colonnettes and inner cusping; diagonal buttresses with gables and miniature tower like pinnacles. Stepped platform. Quadrapartite ribbed vault to open ground floor.  

 

Group value.