Queen Victoria Memorial Clock Tower

This guide traces a promise made in 1897, when Penang merchant Cheah Chen Eok pledged a clock tower exactly sixty feet tall, one foot for every year of Queen Victoria's reign, to mark her diamond jubilee. A design competition ran and the municipal engineer won it, with construction dragging on for two years so that by the time the tower opened in 1902 the reign it honored had already ended. Its five bells still chime the same Westminster tune London itself keeps time to.