STILL TICKING: Cranbury’s Town Hall with its historic clock on the tower. The clock is wound by members of a Clock Winding Committee every three days. Despite challenges and repairs, the clock has been ticking almost continuously since 1906. Paul Mullen, chair of the municipal Clock Winding Committee, is standing in the foreground. (Photo by Wendy Greenberg)

Every hour on the hour, a dulcet D-sharp tone rings throughout Cranbury Township, sometimes heard two miles away.

Cranbury is proud of its 1906 E. Howard & Co. tower clock and bell that sit above its old elementary school, now part of Town Hall. So proud, in fact, that residents vie for slots on the Clock-Winding Committee to take on the responsibility of climbing two flights of stairs and a 12-step ladder to wind the clock every three days.

Despite years of repair and maintenance, including dismantling, cleaning, oiling and greasing, synchronizing, and regulating, there does not seem to be a desire to replace it with an electric clock.

The clock loses about a second every six hours, said Paul Mullen, chair of the municipal Clock Winding Committee. “Sure, we could replace this clock with an electric clock that simply drives the clockface, but we’re an historic town. We want to preserve our historic clock that rings our historic bell for as long as we can.”

“There are people who get it, and there are people who don’t,” said Mullen, sitting outside of Town Hall, listening to the 10 a.m. bell strike while watching the clock on his connected phone.

Mullen is among those who “get it.” He wrote a paperback book in 2022 called Still Ticking: The History and Operation of Cranbury’s Tower Clock, available at the Cranbury Historical and Preservation Society, in which he delves into the history of the clock and its inner workings, including a glossary of timepiece terms.

He explains that what one sees when driving up to Town Hall is the face of the clock, and not the original one at that. The actual clock is an apparatus in the attic, not seen except by the winders.

Having grown up in a Central New York historic house that he said he did not appreciate at the time, Mullen and his wife Marilynn used to drive through Cranbury when they moved to New Jersey (he was employed by Bristol Myers Squibb). They moved to Cranbury in 1987, drawn to its past. As a member of the Cranbury Environmental Commission, the Development Review Committee, and the Zoning Committee, Mullen heard about the Clock Winding Committee and joined it in January 2016.

“It has impacted my life in ways I could not have predicted,” he wrote.

The Beginnings

In the late 1800s, as Mullen points out in his book, it was common for rural schools to have a belfry — a tower room to house a bell. Cranbury’s new school building had such a belfry, and in 1897 the drama club of the time presented the Board of Education with a bell forged by the prestigious McShane Foundry of Baltimore, Md. A clock to complement the bell was purchased by members of the High School Alumni Association on May 3, 1906. It was designed to run for eight days before rewinding and was guaranteed to run for five years, “but the manufacturer expected it to last a century.” Mullen wrote.

Eventually the clock fell into disrepair because, as the book hints, the few maintenance instructions were not written for laypersons. Once fixed and illuminated, in 1928, challenges continued. The clock face was blown off by a hurricane in the 1940s or 1950s, and by the 1960s the bell was no longer working.

Meanwhile, plans were being made for a new elementary school. Thanks to the Save the Old School Committee, the old school and clock were saved from demolition when the new school was built in 1967. In fact, the building housing the clock was named to the National Register of Historic Places in June 1971.

“A New Era”

Cranbury Landmarks was given responsibility for restoring and operating the clock in 1973. However, the group had difficulty finding people to wind it. In 1998, the Township purchased the old school from the Board of Education. The board began renovations in 2000, reviving interest in the clock. A bid to renovate the clock for $40,000 was received but Tom Gambino, a member of the Township Committee, suggested doing the repairs as a community project, and local artisans were recruited.

The clock and bell were restored in time for the new Town Hall ribbon-cutting on October 14, 2001. The Cranbury Press quoted Lyn Green, president of the Cranbury Historical and Preservation Society: “The Cranbury Town Hall clock tower bell has rung in a new era, yet this is the very sound that was heard daily in Cranbury for more than 60 years after the school was built.”

As part of the 2001 restoration, a clock winding committee was established (the brainchild of Gambino, said Mullen). Cranbury has a committee of 12, with six teams of two each maintaining the clock for two months at a time. This was done, said Mullen, to make the winding less burdensome, and generate greater Township interest in and awareness of the clock. Mullen’s book lists and credits every committee member since 2002 to the present.

Despite the formation of the committee, challenges continued. Detailed maintenance instructions did not exist, and the clock was well overdue for a cleaning. In 2017, after consultation with Connecticut Timekeepers of Stratford, Conn., the clock was shut down. Connecticut Timekeepers dismantled everything and took it back to their shop for restoration. Six weeks later they returned and reinstalled it in the attic.

Dedicated Committee

To avoid problems in the future, a 200-page maintenance manual was created, a great improvement, Mullen said, over the original one page of instructions. A plexiglass cover was installed above the clock to protect it from dust and debris, and a motion detector camera was put in place to record the hourly strikes. Cranbury joined the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC), which could provide the committee with expert advice about recurring tower clock issues.

During the years, Cranbury has been dedicated to its clock. In storms, when the clock has stopped, committee members have walked to Town Hall to reactivate it. There is currently a waiting list to join the committee, despite the physical challenge of pulling down a ladder hooked to the wall to get into the attic, and scaling a second ladder in the attic to get into the belfry.

“What’s so amazing,” said Mullen, is that the clock has weathered so much hardship. “There were times when it stopped. Times when there were no volunteers. No instructions on how to maintain it.” Recently, he added, an internal nut fell off, and clock could not be wound. Through the NAWCC, the committee found a professional horologist in Rhode Island who owned an E. Howard tower clock and was able to repair the problem.

The 2026 township budget, said Mullen, has a special fund reserved for the clock “just in case.” Committee members are currently investigating whether to replace the steel cables that support the weights that power the clock.

Mullen’s book quotes an opinion piece from the Cranbury Press dated March 8, 1918: “One of the best things that has come to Cranbury in the recent years is the town clock. When it is in good order it is greatly appreciated by our residents and when it is not, it is greatly missed.”

More than a century later, it still rings true.