Colour postcard shows King’s Lynn Minster’s famous High Tide clock

In our fortnightly Picture This column with Lynn Museum, curator Dayna Woolbright looks at a postcard of a famous old clock…

This colour postcard shows Lynn’s famous High Tide clock, displayed on the south tower at the western end of the Minster.

The original was made by clockmaker Thomas Tue (1613-1710) and given to the Minster in 1681, but the one we can see today is a 20th Century replica.

Looking carefully, we can make out gold letters running clockwise around the perimeter of the face, spelling out LYNN HIGH TIDE.

In between the letters there are red dots or white triangles. Together, these letters and symbols represent the 24 hours of the day – the letters are even hours and symbols are odd hours. For example, L represents 12pm and G is 12am.

The green dragon makes a full rotation of the clock every 29.5 days so to find out the time of the next high tide, we simply look at where the dragon’s head is pointing.

As well as being an important fishing port in the 17th century, Lynn was also exporting large quantities of grain and saw imports of timber and iron, plus an increase of imported wine from France, Spain and Portugal. With this level of trade in mind, we can start to understand the importance of the tide clock as merchants waited anxiously on the quayside for their ships to come in.