Making up for lost time after historic clock found in church

IT SEEMS time really is precious. A rare 250-year-old gilded clock, worth thousands of pounds, has been found beneath a pile of leaves in one of Scotland's most historic churches.

The ornate ormolu clock once adorned the wall of Stirling's Church of the Holy Rude, which was founded in 1129 during the reign of King David I and is the only active church in the UK, apart from Westminster Abbey, to have held a coronation - James VI was crowned King of Scotland there in 1567, in a service conducted by John Knox.

The 2ft-tall clock with a silver-engraved dial was acquired between 1760 and 1780, when the Rev John Muschet was a minister there, and it would have told him and his congregation how long his sermon had gone on.

The church was divided in two in 1656 and the clock is thought to have hung on the dividing wall in the East Kirk.

When the wall was removed and the congregations reunited in 1936, the clock was put into the church's boiler room for storage - with a tag reading "Not To Be Taken". It was not seen again until former watchmaker Douglas Tod, the church's property convener, decided to clear a pile of leaves and dirt that had gathered near an air vent and found the artefact underneath.

The clock, made by Goodfellow of Carlisle, features its original movement. Mr Tod said: "I cleared some of the dead leaves and grime with my hand and saw emerge the gold leaf. It was so dirty, I didn't realise it was a clock at first."

Current minister the Rev Allan Miller said: "It is worth a lot of money, but we have no intention of selling it - it's part of the church's heritage. It would be nice to have it restored and brought back in to working condition."

Elspeth King, director of Stirling's Smith Museum, said: "It would have been very expensive, and must have been a gift from a rich benefactor. Many ministers in those days timed their sermons by an hourglass. Some had them made bigger so they could talk for longer, although, for some in the congregation, to sit through a two-hour sermon would have made them feel even holier."

If James VI's coronation is the highlight of the church's history, the low point came in 1656 when an argument between the Rev James Guthrie and a colleague resulted in a wall being erected to divide the nave from the choir, with the church serving two divided congregations.

Guthrie, a Covenanter, was executed for treason in Edinburgh in June 1661.