In 1911, the Coates village community purchased a clock, to commemorate the coronation of George V.  It was placed in the centre of the village on the National School.

Telling the time for Coates for over a hundred years

Standing proud on the front of the old ‘National School’, the clock, from Stradlings of Cirencester, was installed in the summer of 1911. Like the ‘Trumpton Clock’, it has been telling the time “steadily, sensibly, never too quickly, never too slowly” for Coates ever since.

The building on which the clock hangs, then known as the Poorhouse, may have been erected around 1788, although currently no documentary evidence is available.  The Coates common lands were enclosed by a number of landowners of the time, including the Bathurst estate and the rector of the parish.   The building was owned by the Parish and managed by the Vestry and was next to an area of land known as the Poor Garden, which stretched down to the Trewsbury road.  It appears to have been, in effect, ‘affordable housing’ and to have consisted of a terrace of five one-up-one-down units.  After the 1832 Poor Law was passed, Coates Parish joined the Cirencester Union of Parishes to erect the Cirencester Workhouse.  When this finally opened in the late 1830s, the Poorhouse was disposed of to a private landlord.  In 1849, the ‘dilapidated old Poorhouse’, which had been bought back by Lord Bathurst for the purpose, refurbished and adapted, was re-opened as Coates National School and head teacher’s house.

 After serving the parish for 137 years, the National School closed in 1986. The School building reverted to the Bathurst Estate, which then sold it for residential use. The clock however remains the property of the village and special arrangements were made for its upkeep.