The bell inside the clock tower at the crossroad between Charminar and Chowmahalla Palace is set to ring once again as the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is restoring the 1892 building at a cost of ₹60 lakh.
“The clock tower was built by Asman Jah Bahadur as a service to the society and he named it after the then reigning Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan,” informs Muhammad Qutub Yar Jung, who is related to the Paigah nobleman. Nobody in the vicinity of the monumental clock tower recalls hearing the chime of the bass bell hung inside it. Cast in the small town of Loughborough about 160 km from London by John Taylor in 1865, the gong was brought and installed in the clock tower in 1892. The chime bass bell inside Mumbai’s Rajabai Tower cast by John Taylor & Co was a later version though bigger in size.
“There are two aspects to the conservation work we have undertaken. Clock repair and structural repair. The building has not been maintained for years leading to cracks, peeling plaster and other small issues. Built in stone and lime mortar, it is structurally stable. We are carrying out repairs using traditional methods,” said Duttopant, Superintending Engineer, GHMC. If lack of maintenance was one reason for the state of the clock tower, the scores of roosting pigeons and the pigeons killed in the tangled manja hanging from various nooks and crannies did the rest. Currently, the innards of the building, including the wooden staircase, the wrought iron railing, winding mechanism of the clock and the bell, are caked with pigeon droppings leaving a foul odour. Enclosed in a small symmetrical garden with well-maintained lawns, the area serves as a resting place for workers. There are four landings for the tower with the top one near the clock giving a bird’s eye view of the city with all the domes and minarets in clear sight.
“There was a small confusion about the stability of the clock tower. The study conducted by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University was for the Murgi Chowk or the chicken market. People mistook it for the clock tower. The clock tower is very much stable and is undergoing restoration,” said Anuradha Reddy of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
“We are likely to finish the work by May-end,” said Mr. Duttopant on the conservation effort.
