Growing up in the American South, I never saw many church clocks. Perhaps the newer churches, generally constructed in wood by poor communities, considered clocks an unnecessary expense. Maybe clocks just didn\'t mesh with the simple southern Protestant style. Or maybe I just wasn\'t paying much attention.

However, when I came to the United Kingdom some years ago, the clocks that decorated so many of the high stone towers jumped out at me. To me it seemed a strange mixture, combining the infinity of God with the temporal life of man.

Then a couple of days ago, I found out that you don\'t have to be from a foreign land to \'discover\' church clocks.  As Christopher Howse relates in this article in the Telegraph, sometimes all it takes is a little Shire book to make you look up and take notice.