VISITORS to Felixstowe seafront will be serenaded by the sounds of Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside - from a clock above their heads.The award-winning water clock which used to stand in the Spa Gardens has been given a new home - on the roof of Charles Manning's Amusement Park.

By Richard Cornwell

VISITORS to Felixstowe seafront will be serenaded by the sounds of Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside - from a clock above their heads.

The award-winning water clock which used to stand in the Spa Gardens has been given a new home - on the roof of Charles Manning's Amusement Park.

Today it was due to be hoisted into position by a crane, lifted up high onto the top of the pink funfair building in Sea Road.

But the 15ft high clock will no longer be powered by water, and when it chimes it will play the old song Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside.

Fairground owner Charles Manning bought the 20-year-old clock for £100 from Suffolk Coastal council two years ago after it was decided to remove it from the gardens in Undercliff Road West because it no longer worked.

Mr Manning said: “We just wanted to rescue it originally because we thought it was such a shame that it might disappear from the resort, and thought it would be a nice attraction to have here at the park.

“We didn't really know what to do with it and then thought we would put it on the roof.”

The timepiece, paid for from a bequest from the will of Dr GJ Conford, was made by inventor Rex Garrod from a bizarre assortment of materials.

It was designed to excite comment and its features include bomb parts, sections of a BBC sound desk, video tape from the first Doctor Who episode, parts of the wing skin of Concorde, DC10 engine bolts, and rods from a nuclear power reactor.

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