Plans to salvage historic timeball mechanism as demolition begins.
New Zealand’s Historic Places Trust has spoken of its desire to preserve the timeball mechanism from the Timeballs Station at Lyttleton. Equipment has started to arrive on site ahead of the slow process of dismantling the Category 1 historic building.
Historic Places Trust spokeswoman Priscilla Pitts told Radio New Zealand the 134-year-old building had sustained minor damage in the September 4 earthquake and plans were in place to repair it, but the February quake had damaged the building beyond repair.
“A huge section of one side of it has dropped out, the tower which houses the timeball mechanism is very badly cracked and is probably only being held together by the strengthening that has been done at the top of the tower.
“Every aftershock we’ve had a little bit more damage happens. It really is in a bad way.”
Ms Pitts said as the building is being “dismantled” not demolished, each piece of material is being marked and stored to aid a potential future rebuild. The process is expected to take three months.
“We are going to be taking it done as best we can and with safety paramount, stone by stone, and piece by piece.”
Once the building is stable the dismantling will cease and the next steps will be worked out from there.
“We will almost certainly be building something on that site – whether we will be replicating the former timeball completely, we don’t know.”
The Timeball Station was built in 1876 and was one of only five working Timeball stations in the world.
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