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On a recent tour, a visitor put me straight on the reason for York’s 4 minutes 20 seconds time lapse.
Like most of us, I knew about the astronomical clock but my understanding was that it had been made 4 minutes and 20 seconds wrong and that it had taken someone to step off a train from outside the region to spot what was not apparent to those who lived within. I was told that this was not the case. In fact York’s clock was 100% accurate. The problem was caused not by manufacturing error but because of the need for the railway to work to a single timescale and this had been arranged to be GMT. Therefore every town and city in the country that was to the west of 0 degrees was going to be behind the time according to the railway. The further west you went the more behind the time would be. Bristol for example, being further west than York was locally 11 minutes behind GMT. Thus every clock in the country was deemed to be wrong when in fact they were not. It was the need for a national rail schedule that caused it.
I would be grateful to have this verified by anyone who knows in case I pollute my visitors.Mel Neale
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There was a lecture about this in St Olave’s church during the 2025 Festival of Ideas, and you are correct.
Every town and city had its own astronomical time, although London and York were the first ones to be accurate due to having their own observatories, and Britain only gained a single time zone due to pressure from the railways wanting to have a single national timetable.
This required an act of Parliament, the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880, to be passed so that the legal precedent of Curtis v March from 1858, which ruled that local time was official time, not GMT, could be set aside,
https://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2025/calendar/about-time-york-daytime/
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