Corpus Clock
The Corpus Clock is one of Cambridge's most extraordinary and unsettling public artworks, located on the outer wall of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College on King's Parade, in the historic heart of the city. Unveiled in September 2008 by the late physicist Stephen Hawking, it has rapidly become one of the most discussed and photographed curiosities in Cambridge, drawing visitors from around the world who come specifically to stand before it and reckon with its strange, hypnotic presence. The clock does not merely tell the time in any conventional sense — it is a philosophical meditation on time itself, on its passage, its irreversibility, and the terror that underlies every ticking second.
The clock was conceived and funded by Dr John C. Taylor, an alumnus of Corpus Christi College and the inventor of the kettle's bimetallic strip thermostat, which made him a considerable fortune. Taylor spent five years and approximately one million pounds designing and constructing the piece, working with horological craftsmen and engineers to realise his vision. It took 200 kilograms of gold-plated stainless steel to build the finished work, and the mechanism inside is a genuine grasshopper escapement — a design first invented by the eighteenth-century clockmaker John Harrison, the man who solved the problem of longitude at sea. Taylor intended the Corpus Clock as a tribute both to Harrison's genius and to the college's own distinguished history, as well as a gift to the city of Cambridge more broadly.
The visual centrepiece of the Corpus Clock is the Chronophage — literally the "time-eater" — a grotesque mechanical locust or grasshopper that crouches atop the shimmering golden disc, its serrated mandibles biting down at the edge once every minute as if consuming each passing second. The creature is deeply unsettling to behold in person, its movements jerky and predatory, its metallic body catching the light with a kind of malevolent gleam. The face of the clock itself is a large, rippling disc of gold-plated stainless steel, around which a single ring of LED lights represents the time, sweeping in irregular, sometimes erratic patterns — because the clock is deliberately inaccurate on purpose, running fast, then slow, then stopping altogether, before correcting itself. This irregularity is part of Taylor's message: that time is not steady or reliable, and that the certainty we attach to clocks is an illusion.
In person, the Corpus Clock is far more affecting than photographs suggest. The pendulum mechanism is visible behind the shimmering face, and the sounds the clock makes — a chain dragging across metal, a soft click, the intermittent drip of a drop of liquid into a metal bowl inside the mechanism, audible at the top of each hour — give it an eerie, almost organic presence. At the bottom of the clock face, a Latin inscription reads "mundus transit et concupiscentia eius," from the First Epistle of John, meaning "the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." This reminder of impermanence sits quietly beneath the devouring insect, giving the whole piece an almost ecclesiastical weight.
The surrounding area is among the most architecturally magnificent in England. King's Parade, the street on which the clock stands, runs along the eastern frontage of King's College, whose Gothic chapel dominates the Cambridge skyline. Just opposite is the Great Gate of King's, and within easy walking distance are the Senate House, the market square, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The back of Corpus Christi College opens onto Trumpington Street, and the whole neighbourhood is dense with medieval and early modern buildings. On a busy afternoon the area throngs with tourists, students on bicycles, and tour groups, all of which creates a strange contrast with the memento mori quality of the clock itself.
Visiting the Corpus Clock is free and requires no booking. The clock is set into the exterior wall of the college on King's Parade and can be viewed at any time of day or night, though it is especially atmospheric after dark when its LEDs glow against the stone. Cambridge is best reached by train — Cambridge station is about a twenty-minute walk or short bus ride from King's Parade, and the city centre is largely pedestrianised, making it easy to explore on foot. The surrounding area is also extensively served by local buses and, naturally, cycling is ubiquitous. The clock tends to draw a small, contemplative crowd throughout the day, and visitors often linger longer than they expect, drawn in by the slow, predatory movements of the Chronophage.
One of the more poignant facts about the Corpus Clock is that Stephen Hawking, who unveiled it, chose to do so because he shared with the clock's creator an obsession with the nature of time. Hawking famously said at the unveiling that the clock was "beautifully mad," and noted that it brought together two of his greatest interests — time and Cambridge. The clock has no hands and no numbers, relying entirely on light, and Taylor has said that his intention was for it to be simultaneously a triumph of craftsmanship and a reminder that every second is consumed the moment it exists. The grasshopper escapement inside is entirely functional, making the Corpus Clock a working timepiece as well as a work of art, though its deliberate inaccuracies ensure that you cannot rely on it for anything so mundane as catching a train.