The StoppedClocks Dataset: Britain's Stopped Public Clocks and the Maintenance Accountability Gap

Two linked research datasets on the maintenance of Britain's public clocks, underlying StoppedClocks.org and the forthcoming book When the Clocks Stopped. (1) The documented set — 402 stopped public clocks across Great Britain (predominantly England, with Scottish and Welsh clocks represented), assembled by field observation and public contribution since 2007. Each clock carries location, description, curatorial tags, and a custodian classification (council / private–commercial / ecclesiastical / trust) with a published audit trail: classification source and, where model-resolved, confidence. Statutory heritage listing and grade are included where recorded. The set is a curated floor, not a census: the only unqualified claim it supports is that at least 402 public clocks in Britain are stopped. (2) The FOI census — England's principal councils. Freedom of Information requests to all 314 English principal local authorities via WhatDoTheyKnow: 310 responded, 187 substantively, disclosing 566 council-managed clocks (437 working, 70 stopped, 59 unknown). Building-level records include operational status, dedicated-budget flags, and each council's own description of maintenance arrangements. The two populations are different in kind and must never be combined; canonical_numbers.json carries the locked headline figures with the exact wording each supports. The central finding is the accountability gap: only ≈26% of the documented stopped clocks stand on council-owned buildings, where a statutory access regime compels an answer about maintenance; ≈74% stand on private, commercial, ecclesiastical or trust buildings, outside the reach of any public enquiry mechanism. This is a claim about reach, not cause. Files: clocks.csv/clocks.json (402 rows), foi_councils.csv (310), foi_inventory.csv (566), canonical_numbers.json, README.md (full codebook, methodology and scope notes), CITATION.cff, LICENSE.txt. Personal data scrubbed; AI-assisted enrichment prose and third-party database fields deliberately excluded. v1.0 corresponds to the live corpus and corrected FOI extraction as of 4 June 2026; the dataset grows and is corrected over time under this record's concept DOI. Live archive: https://stoppedclocks.org · Contact: [email protected]