The responsibility for clocks - and before them sundials - fell to the Constable, and records of payments made for work maintaining the clocks therefore appear in the Constables' Accounts.

The accounts for 1700-1736 have many entries (see below). In 1708 Mr Hawkins was paid 5s "for mending the sun diall", with a further 1s 6d paid to "poore men who wase assisting in itt".

In the same year Mr John Butler was paid 8d for "hingis for the clocke dore".

Mr John Tubb was the usual keeper of the clock, but there were some periods when Mr Cutler performed this task. Others who assisted by supplying spares and equipment for the clock included Adam Betteridge "for the clock line", and Mr Woodroffe for "Wire for the clock".

In June 1862, Mr. Hall, the Magistrate's Clerk, gave to the town a grand new clock. Mr Hall was a solicitor who lived in a house on the west side of the lower High Street. He retired c1861, and his house was demolished to make way for the building of the first railway bridge across the High Street in 1862.
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To accommodate Mr Hall's new clock, a new clock-tower was built on the existing Town Hall. The clock had three faces, there being no benefit from a west-facing dial, given the close proximity to the adjacent buildings.

Perhaps this bulky clock tower resulted in damage to the 1786 building - because within a few years it was decided to build a completely new Town Hall and Corn Exchange, which was completed in 1871.

The new clock-tower was much higher, and the fourth, west-facing dial was added for the benefit of those people living along Church Street and the west of the town. The left face was therefore slightly different to the other three. All had cast-iron numerals and decoration.

Local people were used to the sound of the bells striking through the day and night, but some visitors to the Three Swans Hotel on the other side of the market place often complained of disturbed sleep by the quarter-hour chimes through the night. Ernest Clements, a clock and watchmaker at 1 Bridge Street, made a device that silenced the chimes for 7 hours in each 24 hours. Unless everything was correctly adjusted, however, the period of silence was not always at night!
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It is said that during the Second World War, a member of the Home Guard took a shot at the eastern clock face when on an exercise near the railway station. Two faces were renewed in the 1950s as the glass and cast-iron frames had begun to fracture. The south face was made of opaque plastic, and let little light through.

The 1607 Town Hall in 1769 showing the clock on the north gable

The 1786 Town Hall, from a paining
by G. Shepherd, 1821

The 1786 Town Hall, with its original cupola, c1861

The 1786 Town Hall, with its new clock-tower incorporating Mr Hall's clock, c1862

The 1786 Town Hall, with its empty clock tower, with the new 1871 Town Hall beyond, housing Mr Hall's clock.