Harris centrepiece explained ahead of grand reopening

The centrepiece of Preston’s revamped Harris Museum has been revealed ahead of the historic building’s long-awaited reopening later this month.

The UK’s longest ‘Foucault pendulum’ – a 19th century invention designed to demonstrate the earth’s rotation – will hang from ceiling to floor in the Grade I-listed venue.

At 35 metres, the device – which is already in situ – surpasses the 22.45-metre example that can be found at the London Science Museum.

The Harris first got a Foucault pendulum back in 1909 – 16 years after the attraction opened to the public.   It was reinstated as a feature back in 1992 – and, in its new form, will be a focal point and thread that runs through all three floors.

Tim Joel, head of culture at Preston City Council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that it was almost like the pendulum had always been destined to be in its new position.

“Moving it from the side of the rotunda between the pillars to the centre has created a real feature.

“It really picks up the architectural design of the floor – it’s almost as if the pendulum and the floor were designed together. It sits beautifully,” Tim said.

He added that seeing the pendulum in place had been a “reassuring” milestone as The Harris team gets set to welcome the venue’s first visitors in four years when the doors swing open on 28th September after its £19m revamp to create what has been billed as the country’s first ‘blended” museum, art gallery and library.

“For me, I think there’s now a real sense of the fathers of the Harris here – of this edifice to art, science and literature, as it’s described on the outside of the building in gold lettering.

“The pendulum is at the heart of the [building], surrounded by the fabulous artwork collections that we’ve got – and we’ve got library stock also surrounding the rotunda and science books next to the pendulum.

“So there is that real sense of bringing all of those three core elements of the family vision of the Harris together in the rotunda – and I think it really does justice to that original vision,” Tim explained.

The creation of the new pendulum was born out of a collaboration between The Harris and the University of Lancashire.   It involved the development of a prototype – to one fifth scale – which has been repeatedly refined in recent years, before the real thing started to take shape around six months ago.

Professor Derek Ward-Thompson, project adviser and director of the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute at the university and the observatory at Moor Park, said the designer of the first pendulum in The Harris had also occupied his observatory director post.   It was for that reason he was approached to help create the new installation.

“There’s a circularity to the history,” he said.

But Prof Ward-Thompson is keen to credit Dr Brett Patterson, the project scientist and a senior lecturer in physics at the university, who worked on “all the details of the prototype, with just a little bit of input from myself”.

Dr. Patterson, who built the pendulum’s sophisticated electronic systems, said:   “This is not just the longest pendulum in the UK, but a precision instrument that has taken months of careful calibration to achieve perfect operation.”

The professor says one of the biggest benefits of the new pendulum is that it is “low maintenance”, requiring no human intervention other than a battery change every 24-48 hours – and he told the LDRS that visitors to the refurbished Harris are in for a spectacular scientific sight.

“The pendulum swings backwards and forwards like all pendulums, but it has no preferential direction in which to swing – we can set it going wherever we want.  But it then carries on swinging exactly in that plane – and the Earth rotates under it.

“In The Harris, the marks on the floor and the diamond compass-point tile pattern, [mean that] as you watch it for a while, you’ll see it gradually move,

“But that’s actually the Earth moving underneath it. [The pendulum is] not moving – we are.”