Where do you meet on a crowded railway concourse? The obvious place is under the Station Clock as it is usually centrally positioned so that it is visible from each of the exits from the platforms.

One of the most iconic Meeting places is under the railway clock at Waterloo station, famously the meeting place for Laura and Alec in Noel Coward’s 1946 film Brief Encounter, although the scenes were shot at Carnforth station, and of Del Boy and his future wife, Raquel in the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special in 1988, Dates. Curiously, despite its iconic status, whenever I have arranged to meet someone there, there has been hardly anyone else staring anxiously and vacuously into the distance.

Manufactured by Gents of Leicester, on its installation it was described by the Daily Mirror in its edition of November 19, 1919 as a “two ton clock…of novel construction”. What was unusual about it was that it used within its mechanism an electric “synchronome”, which ensured that each of its four faces told the same time. It also had twenty-four hour faces, well before British Rail adopted the twenty-four hour clock as standard in 1964.

Waterloo’s clock was originally positioned in front of the taxi rank between platforms 11 and 12, platform 11 being the terminus for the Ocean Liner Expresses, and the Bournemouth Belle. When the Windsor train shed was demolished to make way for the International platforms, two new platforms, 12 and 13, were opened and the original platform 12 was redesignated 14.

It did not take long for the clock to be established as a meeting place. Londonist in their blog notes that in 1924 a short story syndicated in the press featured a meeting under the clock, another from 1927 spoke of an “under the clock” tradition for meeting at Waterloo a rendezvous that formed the basis for a romantic liaison in a 1935 short story.

Next time you are at the station, see just how many people are waiting under it. It might just lead to an exciting adventure!