On 10th June 1864 the clock was installed on the Prince Albert Memorial Clock Tower, completing its construction. At 65 feet tall the tower had a life size sculpture of Prince Albert, the clock and a drinking fountain.  A glass bottle within a cavity of the foundation stone contained a parchment that read: ‘Prince Consort Memorial. The foundation stone of this clock tower, erected in commemoration of the esteem and regard entertained by the inhabitants of this Borough towards his late Royal Highness, the Prince Consort, was laid by Thomas Ross esquire, Mayor of Hastings, on Monday the tenth day of November 1862’. The names of members of the fundraising committee, the contractors, architect, treasurer and secretary were also on the parchment.

This picture shows how the memorial clock tower looked when first built.

Fast forward to 1973 and the memorial was set fire to twice a couple of months apart. These events highlighted its poor condition, the statue of Albert and sculptural detail on the clock tower itself being badly eroded. The council took the decision to demolish it, and by November 1973 it was gone. The demolishers broke the bottle in the foundation stone and threw the parchment away.

All that remains is the statue of Albert, which was brought for £50 by Mrs Skelton and moved to the greenhouses in Alexandra Park. It remains there today. You can read the full story of the memorial clock tower here.

The photo above is a merge of a photo taken in 1900 with one taken recently. I used the same technique as the ‘Ghosts of the Pier’ image. If you want to see more of this type of work I recommend Sergey Larenkov’s blog. His work has inspired mine.

As always you can view a larger size image in Flickr by clicking on the image.