Clock appeal is timely (From Bournemouth Echo)

Clock appeal is timely

8:00am Tuesday 9th February 2010 in

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I so much agree with Cllr Anne Filer, chairman of the Bournemouth Bicentenary celebrations, that it would be great if the Lansdowne clock could be chiming again (Daily Echo, February 6).

During my researches into the history of Bournemouth’s 20 Members of Parliament, which I have submitted for appropriate publication for the Bicentenary, I discovered that it was Mrs Croft, the mother of one of our longest serving MPs, who donated the Lansdowne clock tower, with its four faces based on Big Ben, to the town.

Henry Page Croft was already representing the Christchurch division when Bournemouth became its own constituency and he was elected its first MP in the so-called khaki election of 1918.

He served a total of 30 years in the House, for which he was made a baronet, and during which he purchased Knole House, a fine Tudor-style mansion in Boscombe whose previous owner, a Mr Christy, devoted some of his wealth to the service of God by endowing a new church in Gothic style by the architect John Sedding-St Clements, round the corner in St Clements Road.

Sadly, the age of such benefactors has long gone but, hopefully, not so much as to raise the £8,000 to restore the Lansdowne clock this year.

David Atkinson, Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East 1977-2005