Gerry Murphy is a local member of the Shinrone Heritage Group, with a background in fine arts and antiques. He spoke to us on partnering with St. Mary's Church of Ireland and Nigel Barnes to bring the town clock back into action.

Shinrone has Offaly’s oldest working turret clock dating from 1820. It was made by the famous Dublin horologist Christopher Sharp for the newly built St Mary's Church of Ireland. It is one of the few mechanical clocks left working in the countryside, thanks to Shinrone Heritage Group who took the initiative to apply for Creative Ireland funding for a restoration project involving commissioning an 80-year-old clock maker Nigel Barnes from County Clare to restore the clock.

The community clock, while ‘irrelevant’ today, would have acted as the social, culture and religious timekeeper of Shinrone Village. Everybody who had a pocket watch passing that clock, would have casually just checked to make sure that the clock was synchronised.

People didn't live their lives regulated within a minute or two the way we do today. Not until the mid-19th century, only when trains arrived at the village did the clock start to play a role in timekeeping as well as for more important events in the village around church timekeeping.

The clock deviates from the norm of the time in that it functions on a birdcage movement. It is a bird frame clock, the frame for it was made by a blacksmith, and then the clock maker has cut all the brass parts to go into it.

It ticks 3 million times a year - think about 200 years by 3 million ticks.

It is 3 minutes fast and 3 minutes slow.

Gravity and wind impact the hand when it comes over tilting it forward by three minutes. And on the way back up, then it falls back by three minutes. Additionally, because the pendulum is made of timber and timber contracts and expands. So, the warmer it is, the shorter it gets and speeds up the clock. In winter it gets longer with swelling and slows down the clock.

People started to take an interest in the project; what did the clock mean to people and started asking older people in the community, did they remember the clock?

In heritage projects it's important to “draw the solution out of the communities” because you give a sense of ownership, always give a sense of ownership. It’s important to look for the relevant resources within the community or very close to the community. The Heritage Group worked through setting up workshops to engage people of all generations.

It makes a concise story and makes them much more relatable and relevant to the individual. Taking people of all age groups, sometimes the old become the mentor to the younger of, I remember what that object, how that functioned in my time. Those involved go back and tell their families all about it and then when it comes to conclusion and success and celebration of the project, they’re all part of that. It pulled people interested in engineering, heritage, the story of clock making, or in the maker themselves and their contribution to clock making.

It was the greatest education for the community. A project on an inanimate object has created an active afterlife impact on the community in which they now know how to maintain and sustain the clock. Once every six months they go up and know exactly where to oil. Back in its prime, a person was paid to go up to the church tower to wind it every six days. If you missed it on the 7th day, you needed two people, one person to wind it and somebody to go outside and tell you when it was the right time.

Within a six-month window roughly from March to August the project was completed, and a community celebration was held in the community hall.