123-year-old clock gifted by Lord Curzon to Golden Temple restored

CHANDIGARH: The 123-year-old manual clock, which was gifted to the Golden Temple by Lord Curzon, who was the Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, has now been restored after two years and will be put back in the sacred sanctum in January 2026. The clock is now ticking.It was in 2023 that the Birmingham-based Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha (GNNSJ) took out this brass-made, one-foot-wide and one-and-a-half-feet-tall manual clock, weighing ten kilograms, from the Golden Temple to Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) had handed over the restoration and conservation of frescoes, wall paintings and golden plates of the shrine to GNNSJ, led by Bhai Mohinder Singh. The clock, which was made on order for Lord Curzon in 1900, has now been fully restored and is working again.The clock carries the inscription: “This clock was presented to the Golden Temple at Amritsar by Lord Curzon, Viceroy & Governor General of India, on the occasion of his first official visit, April 1900.”“This clock was concealed on the northeast side entrance of the Golden Temple inside one of the spans in the wall and was hidden behind another modern clock as this clock was not in working condition. When we removed that clock, we found this clock. We took this clock to Elkington & Co Limited at Birmingham, from where this clock was made on order. We do not know when it stopped working. Thus, the original mechanical movement system of this manual clock, hands and dial had been removed and replaced long back with a quartz mechanism and dull aluminium dial, but it supposedly also did not work. The brass housing bore dents, cracks, scratches and missing decorative elements,” said Inderjit Singh, representative of GNNSJ, while talking to TNIE.Singh added that after removing the clock, extensive research was carried out and the officials and employees of the company made a brand-new manual system of the watch piece by piece and assembled the clock again. “Now gold patras will be put and the clock will be placed at the same spot in January 2026 where it was earlier installed. Around £80,000 (approximately Rs 96 lakh) has been spent on the restoration of this clock,” he said, adding that Bhai Mohinder Singh brought it back to India after restoration in November and it is now fully functional.“The aluminium face with hand-painted Punjabi numerals has been replaced with a brass face and Roman numerals, just the way it was when Lord Curzon handed it over. Also, special brushes have been given by the company to clean it,” he added.It was on April 9, 1900, that Lord Curzon and his wife visited the Golden Temple and saw what he described as an “unworthy appearance of the clock which used to hang upon the walls of the Harmandir”.



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