The oldest tower clocks of Transcarpathia

Almost every town in Transcarpathia has one, or even several, churches with tower clocks. In some places they “stay silent”, in others they “keep time”, and elsewhere - they are merely painted onto the façade. This last tradition has two explanations: a symbolic one and a thoroughly practical one. Some say that tower clocks were painted onto churches so that passers-by would always remember the time allotted to them on earth and cherish it. And sometimes it is claimed that churches were deliberately built with an opening for a clock. And if the religious community had no money to install one, the opening was temporarily, so to speak until better times, covered over with a mock-up.

The oldest tower clock of the region - in Mukachevo

Fortunately, we do not have all that many mock tower clocks. Instead, Transcarpathia can quite rightly boast a good dozen antique clock mechanisms that have miraculously survived to the present day. Indeed, the oldest tower clock in the region turned 418 years old this year. It is located on the tower of St Martin’s Cathedral in Mukachevo and, they say, may lay claim to the title of the oldest in all of Eastern Europe! It is now looked after by the cathedral churchman Robert Shandor. Every evening, on his way home from the church, he winds the mechanism single-handedly, manually hoisting three weights, each of which weighs 120 kilograms. This clock is unique in that all of its parts are made by hand. There is no engraving of the date of manufacture on it, but historians have looked through old records and found data indicating that it was brought here in 1596. Local historians assure us that an identical one, though long since out of use, has survived in one of Vienna’s museums. Over the years of its work, ours too has broken down more than once, and in Soviet times, when the ringing of bells was forbidden, it lay gathering dust in an attic for over 50 years.

The two tower clocks of Uzhhorod

The second oldest clock in Transcarpathia ought to be in Uzhhorod - on the tower of the Roman Catholic Church of St George. As far back as 1820, a mechanism was installed there by which the townspeople set their time. It was looked after by the master craftsman György Lyasota, yet this respectable gentleman was unable to save the clock from a fire that broke out and caused considerable damage to the church building. In 1857 the then priest, István Varga, called upon his parishioners to restore the tower clock through their joint efforts. With the funds gathered by the people, a new mechanism was bought, but it too has not survived to this day, for, according to documentary records, it broke down at the beginning of the last century. The clock we see in the very centre of Uzhhorod today was purchased no longer by the townspeople, but by the town council.

Another clock, however, keeps time precisely - the one located on the tower of the Holy Cross Greek Catholic Cathedral. It is this one that can be called the second oldest in Transcarpathia. These Uzhhorod chimes were installed in 1878, when the cathedral was rebuilt under the direction of the architect L. Fabri.

The legend of the Schönborn Palace, or a tale of a clock and jealousy

One of the most beautiful landmarks of Transcarpathia - the hunting palace of the Counts Schönborn on the grounds of the present-day “Karpaty” sanatorium - can also boast an antique tower clock with three dials. It was installed, most likely, in 1895, during the construction of the castle. There are several stories about this clock, but all of them are connected with jealousy. Legends that local old-timers still retell claim that the wife of Count Schönborn was constantly unfaithful to him. One day, returning early from a hunt, he found her in the embrace of a handsome young military man. The count, so the story goes, drove the unfaithful woman out together with her lover, and ordered his servants to erase forever from the dial the hour at which this had happened. They say the figure four disappeared from the tower clock for a long time, and it was restored only recently, when the mechanism itself was also repaired.

Another legend describes that same story of the wife’s infidelity a little differently. Supposedly, the enraged count, having caught his wife in another man’s embrace, dashed out into the street and began firing at the clock. It was then, allegedly, that it stopped for many long years.
Fortunately, none of these legends is true. At least, this is the firm belief of the Mukachevo clockmaker Ivan Onysko, who back in 1990 climbed the tower of the Schönborn castle in order to set the antique mechanism going. “I did not see any traces of the count’s bullets on the dial or the clock itself. The figures on the dial were also intact. The mechanism itself, however, was in a dreadful state: broken and partly looted. We not only restored the clock, but also added two striking mechanisms to it. Because, as it turned out, the original did not chime the hour,” - Ivan Onysko recounted.
Today the master craftsman comes to the “Karpaty” sanatorium every 6 days to wind the antique mechanism. Single-handedly he raises three heavy weights, each of which weighs almost 300 kilograms. He says he has specially adjusted the clock so that it does not need to be wound every day.

The story of Mukachevo’s main clock and a court case

Yet another antique clock mechanism is installed in the very heart of the town on the Latoritsa, on the building of the town hall. There is one curious story connected with this clock, which took place in Mukachevo in the thirties of the last century.

One gentleman, going by the time shown by the clock on the town hall, missed the train that was to take him to Košice. As it turned out, the clock was running a full 30 minutes slow - and this so enraged the unfortunate gentleman that he decided to sue the town council. The gentleman won the case, emptying the town treasury of a tidy sum. Ever since then, they say, in Mukachevo they began to take great care that the clock on the town hall tower showed the exact time.