A Question of Time

We changed the clocks on Saturday night (strictly speaking it was Sunday morning). I love the lighter evenings that come with British Summer Time, but I absolutely hate losing an hour because it takes me weeks to adjust. I set my alarm clock for Sunday morning because I wanted to make absolutely sure that I didn't miss out on my usual Sunday morning routine and to make sure that I was wide awake in plenty of time to enjoy the omnibus edition of The Archers. We were awake by 8am and we enjoyed a nice relaxed morning, but this morning I was much more reluctant to get up, it felt like the middle of the night. Why do we have to be so tied to time?

To answer my own question, it is all the fault of the railways. In the middle ages towns and villages managed perfectly well with local time, set from a sundial, but everybody had slightly different local time. Mechanical clocks were created and they were also set using the sun and local time continued. When the railways developed it was very inconvenient to have various local times, imagine the timetable nightmares. The Great Western Railway was the first to adopt London Time in 1840, others followed and by 1847 most were working to London time, this is confirmed by the January 1848 edition of Bradshaws Railway Timetable (no Robbie's collection does not go back that far!). By 1855 most public clocks were set to GMT, but this held no legal status until the Definition of Time Act in 1880. There is a certain irony in all this, the railways 'invented' standard time with GWR leading the way, now time is their master and it seems that punctuality seems to create greater problems for FGW than for anyone else!