OUR WIDE-EYE photo in Memories 501 featured Darlington Covered Market on March 11, 1965, with the town clock showing 10 minutes to three. Eagle-eyed reader Paul Carter spotted that on an Ed-wardian postcard view published alongside it and taken at least 50 years earlier, the clock was also showing 2.50pm.

John Heslop in Durham was struck by the coincidence, and a quick google revealed many other pic-tures of the clock, particularly from the 1950s, also showing 2.50pm.

So is it just coincidence, asks John, or was the clock stuck at ten to three for much of the 20th Century?

The Echo’s archive of pictures of the clock shows that there are several pictures taken shortly before kick-off in the football, but there are plenty of others with the hands at every imaginable place on the dial.

Not, though, that the town clock was always precisely accurate.

On May 5, 1940, the notorious turncoat broadcaster Lord Haw Haw pumped out a German propaganda message on the wireless saying that Darlington’s new electricity station in Haughton Road was making it a target for German bombers.

In an attempt to prove that he had spies everywhere, Lord Haw Haw finished his message by saying that “Darlington Town Hall Clock” was two minutes slow.

Everyone rushed out onto High Row to have a look, and the town clock was indeed two minutes be-hind the correct time.

It has never been explained how Lord Haw Haw had such an intimate knowledge of Darlington.