Repair of city’s historical clock on Hall Gate in sight

Manmeet Singh Gill
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, April 8

After lying defunct for decades, now there is a some hope for the rejuvenation of the wall installed at the Hall Gate as officials are planning to get it repaired under the National HRIDAY (Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana) Project. The gate, named after the then deputy commissioner CH Hall, was constructed in 1786 and a wall clock, along with a large alarm bell designed by then executive engineer John Gordon, was installed on it.

After ringing for several decades, the clock and the bell went defunct.

It was renamed as Gandhi Gate after attaining freedom from the British rule but it is still popular as Hall Gate as people relate its name to hall (big) ‘darwaja’ (gate).

Old timers say that the bell rang after every hour and people usually kept a count of the hourly bells to keep a record of the time.

Kuldeep Kaur, a resident of Katra Bagghian, says, “We had been hearing the bell when we were young. Now, people have almost forgotten about the clock.”

The British had constructed the 12 gates, along with the wall outside the old city after demolishing the old wall and gates built during the period of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In the recent decades, the rooms inside the two large pillars of the gate have been occupied by agents of print media advertisers.

However, with times changing and people preferring wrist watches and presently mobile phones, the historical clock has been ignored for long, both by the residents and the authorities concerned.

Gurmeet Rai Sangha, heritage conservation expert and advisor to HRIDAY project, says, “Clock towers in many cities have been restored and clocks have been repaired.” She said that they were consulting mechanics who had done such a job. Sangha expressed that apart from repairing the clock, the most important part is to keep it running.