While the mechanism itself is in good working order the drive shafts (which operate the four clock faces) are worn and need replacing.

Anyone who looks up at the clock today can see tangible evidence of this with the dial facing Kirkgate showing a slightly different time from the other three.

Also apparent is the fact that all four dials need regilding - a job last carried out 14 years ago (see picture).

Both the present clock and dials were installed in 1897-8 but the history of time-keeping at the parish church goes back much further than that - in fact almost 300 years.

One of the earliest references we have to a clock at the church dates from 1627 when the churchwardens' accounts record a payment of six shillings for supplying a new "checke wheele for the clocke".

At this date it is uncertain whether the clock was located inside the church or in a separate clock house.

In 1638 1643 1659 and 1666 there are various payments recorded in the accounts for repairs to a clock house and in 1645 nails were purchased "for ye churchgate next ye clock".

It is not known exactly when a clock was first set up in the church tower although it is likely to have been some time towards the end of the 17th Century.

Reference to a clock house disappear from the churchwardens' accounts after 1666 although when a view of the church from the north was published in Robert Thoroton's Antiquities of Nottinghamshire in 1677 there were still no clock dials visible on the exterior of the tower.

Probably the first specific evidence we have to a clock being located in the tower appear in a church terrier of 1770 after which date successive inventories make it clear that the clock was accorded its own special room above the bell ringing chamber.

In 1799 a brand new clock was installed at the church manufactured by the noted clockmaker John Whitehurst of Derby.

The Whitehurst clock provided excellent service for almost 100 years although with the introduction of various "improvements" to its original mechanism it became greatly altered.

By the time it was removed in 1897 the weekly process of winding the clock could take anything up to an hour. It was operated by three heavy weights on ropes which over the course of a week descended from the clock chamber (around 80ft up in the tower) right down to the ground floor.

To hoist just one of these weights back up to its starting position was said to have taken 20 minutes. In 1897 Whitehurst's clock was temporarily stopped to allow the church bells to be rehung.

When the time came for the clock to be restarted it was found to be wholly incapable of operating its chimes with the bells in their new position. A new clock was clearly needed but the cost - 185 pounds - was entirely beyond the capacity of church funds.

A public subscription was proposed but found ineffective at raising the required sum. Then in 1897 at the 11th hour support came from a most unexpected but nevertheless welcome quarter when the town mayor Mr Becher Tidd Pratt announced that he personally would pay for a new clock and present it as a gift to the town.

By November 1897 an order had been placed with the distinguished clockmakers J. B. Joyce and Co of Whitchurch in Shropshire with the new clock finally being installed at Newark on July 22 1898 - the day of St Mary Magdalene to whom the church is dedicated.

At the same time as the clock mechanism was replaced so too were the four ornamental dials positioned on each side of the church tower.

Today it is these four dials of 1898 that still display the time to all and sundry high above the streets of the town. The three dials facing Kirkgate Appletongate and the Mount School are each 7ft in diameter while that facing the Market Place being considered the most important is larger at 9ft diameter.

Back in 1897 when Becher Tidd Pratt donated the clock to the town the vicar (the Rev M. Wild) commented: "We have every reason for being sure that we shall have a first-rate timekeeper and worthy of its place."

Now after almost a century of constant use Newark parish church clock needs a little extra help to ensure it is ready to face the millennium in perfect working order.

ABOVE: The dials of Newark parish church clock were last regilded in July 1983 when Mr Les Kirk (left) and Mr Dave Jones craftsmen from Smiths of Derby undertook the work. Now 14 years on they are in need of gilding again for which funds will have to be raised.