Essential maintenance is to be carried out on The Clock House at Truro’s Lemon Quay after the cold weather caused the clock to stop working.

The site is well known in Truro and houses 17 apartments on the first and second floors and JD Weatherspoon on the ground floor.

Sue Fraser of managing agents Scott Burridge Commercial said: “The clock has the original workings installed when the building was constructed in 1956. Despite the fact that it is regularly serviced, the mechanism has become unstable over time and the recent cold weather has caused it to freeze up and become badly damaged.

“The result is that currently all four faces are unable to tell the correct time.”

She said that last week the company met in the tower with an engineer from Smiths of Derby, one of the most revered names in English horology.

The engineer feared it could take up to two months for the necessary parts to be replaced. If they found that the broken parts were unavailable then a new movement would have to be manufactured, which could take a good deal longer.

“We are aware that many members of the public use the clock to ensure they catch their buses on time and we wanted to ensure that they are informed that it will not keep the correct time for a number of weeks. We will of course let them know when the clock is back to normal.”

She added that The Clock House was one of the most unusual properties the company managed and the repairs to the mechanism had proved to be challenging.