Bit of a different one this week for Window Wednesday in that I am not featuring one place and their windows this week, but I am wandering around the whole town of Deal.
It was only when I looked through all my photos from our weekend in White Cliffs Country that I realised just how many photos of buildings I have taken. I can never take too many in my opinion. And not just windows, but also doors and roofs. I love them all.
That added to the admission that I haven’t really been anywhere recently where I have been grabbed by their windows. The only time I have left the house is to go to the tip, the vet or the supermarket and none of those really inspire me to grab my camera to be honest! Though we did go to a gorgeous old house for lunch on Sunday but that will feature tomorrow on How Does Your Garden Grow.
Back to Deal though:
This is straight out of a Dickens novel, isn’t it?
This painting below was on a derelict building on the seafront. Always sad to see buildings closed up, I think.
The Timeball Tower fascinated us so much that we stood for twenty minutes in the rain to watch the ball rise and fall. It has stood on the site since 1855 and signified the time to passing ships.
Like the Ball at Greenwich, the Deal Ball was painted black. It also operated in a similar way. It started to rise at 12.55 Greenwich Mean Time, stopping halfway up the mast. At 12.57, it rose to the top, before dropping at 13.00 precisely – the moment of one o’clock being signified by the start of the drop. An automated return signal was then sent from Deal back to Greenwich to indicate whether or not the Ball had dropped on time.
If the Ball failed to drop properly, it would be kept for 10 minutes at the halfway point then lowered gradually and dropped again by hand at 14.00, but with a lower guarantee as to its accuracy.
The timings given above are those published in The Admiralty list of Time Signals in 1880 and 1898. They are slightly different to the timings given for Greenwich, where the Ball began its final ascent some 30 seconds later. It is not known why this discrepancy existed. Today the Greenwich Ball begins its final ascent at 12.58
Is it a record shop? or is it an off licence?!
