The clock on The Corn Exchange building is something of an oddity, because it has two minute hands, and harks back to the Victorian days when Bristol was in a bit of muddle over time.

Actually the whole country was, because prior to 1880 and the introduction of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) there was no standard time within Great Britain. Every town and city had it's own local time, calculated by the position of noon-day sun and signaled by the ringing of church bells.

Since Bristol lies 2 Degrees, 36 minutes west of the Greenwich Meridian, the sun reaches noon in Bristol some 11 minutes after Greenwich. Now prior to the advent of Mr Brunel and his railways, this wasn't much of a problem; as most people spent the majority of their lives in one place. What travel there was, was slow and time tables were generally vague, so the lack of a common time wasn't much of a problem.

 All that changed for Bristol, when in 1841, the railway arrived; and Great Western Railways started to run trains from London to Bristol. Suddenly London was hours, not days away.

 Not only were the trains run to strict time table, but they were run on London time, meaning that if passengers wished to catch the noon train they had to remember that the train would depart from Bristol at 11:49 – 11 minutes before noon in Bristol

 Therefore to help Bristolians to catch their trains, a number of public clocks around the city were fitted with an extra minute hand, showing the time in London. This state of affairs persisted until 1852 when the city of Bristol adopted GMT and Bristol local time was no more.

The clock on The Corn Exchange building, is I believe the only clock in Bristol that still has two minutes hands.

To log this cache you need to complete TWO simple tasks:

1. Locate the nearby plaque that goes with the clock, and answer the following question. What Bristol organisation provided this clock? Enter this 11 letter word into the “Password” box in CAPITAL letters.

2.Post a photo of yourself, or your GPSr, standing next to one of the five famous bronze structures that all Corn Exchanges came with – The Nails.