Pictured: Peckham High Street and the clocktower in 1905.

The broken Jones and Higgins clock at 1 Rye Lane is expected to proclaim the hours and minutes for the first time in 35 years this week, after a repair team finally gained access to the tower to fix it.

Last year local architect Benedict O’Looney was granted £8,000 from the Peckham and Nunhead community council’s Cleaner Greener Safer fund to mend the clock, which has stood frozen in time for more than three decades.

He is working with Croydon-based clockmaker Gillett and Johnston, which maintained the timepiece for many years when the building was occupied by Jones & Higgins department store.

O’Looney told the Peculiar previously: “This has got to be the grandest building in Peckham and the clock hasn’t been working since forever. People have been coming into Peckham town centre and seeing it’s quarter past seven for the last 35 years.

“We thought, this isn’t right – it’s such a prominent clocktower and Peckham deserves more.”

Jones & Higgins opened on Rye Lane in 1867 and expanded the building in 1894. The clock-tower suffered bomb damage during World War Two and was rebuilt in the 1950s with a simpler design than the elaborate original.

An old Gillett & Johnston logbook revealed that the company made regular visits to Jones & Higgins between the 1890s and 1950s. “Through the medium of the logbook you could get a real sense of what the store was like,” O’Looney said.

“It talks about repairing the clock in Mr Higgins’ office, or in the matron’s lunch room. It showed what a close involvement the company had with what was once one of the great, flourishing department stores of south London.”

The department store closed in 1980 and part of it was knocked down to build the Aylesham Centre. The remaining section of the building at 1 Rye Lane was later occupied by Peckham Palais nightclub, which has since closed down.