You know how on QVC, there’s never a gadget that performs only one function? Everything has to be multi-purpose, even if some of those purposes are a little bit questionable? William Bell (1844-1919) was once Chief Architect of the North Eastern railway, and I reckon he’d have loved QVC.

By Middlesbrough Dock, there was a need for a simple accumulator tower: a big tower containing water to provide hydraulic pressure to operate things like lock gates. William Bell’s team were on it in 1903. They decided not only to make an accumulator tower, but also to whack a clock tower on top. Why not?

Well, because the local ironworks didn’t want workers clock-watching, that’s why not. But Bell’s team weren’t to be defeated: they simply installed three clock faces, and left the fourth face—in the direction of the ironworks—blank.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way…