St Augustine's Tower

Today was a bit of a dreary day, but we decided to venture out to see the oldest building in Hackney, which has limited openings on the last Sunday of the month. Dating back to the 13th century, St Augustine's Tower is all that remains of Hackney's original parish church, which was demolished in 1798 to build the larger church which still stands nearby.

The building is listed Grade I, which means that it is in the top 2% of listed buildings in the country.

Since our recent trip to Barcelona didn't include that essential European-getaway activity of paying to climb up numerous narrow, winding stone steps for a view, we did a bit of that today, albeit without the paying part.

On the first floor, the backlit clock pendulum swings,

while the clock workings themselves are on the second floor. Dating back to the beginning of the 17th century, the clock was manually wound for over 400 years before automatic winding was installed.

The clock face you saw in the first photo is just on the other side of this mechanism.

Although this face was a later addition, at one point, the chiming of the clock was the only way to tell time in Hackney village. Winding up to the third floor, we entered the bell room, and since it was just a few minutes before the hour, we waited until the bell rang VERY LOUDLY:

The next level opened out onto the roof, to which access was reopened in 2005 after a hefty restoration courtesy of a lottery grant.

We weren't up there very long before it started to rain, so we decided to head back down through the very small door,

down the very narrow steps.

The garden behind the tower was dotted with promises of spring,

cornerstones from the demolished old church,

and some gravestones.

At this point, the rain started to come down ever harder, so instead of heading to our next planned destination, we hurried home for a round of serious lounging over the weekend paper instead!