The Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower, or colloquially Old Joe, is a clock tower and campanile located in Chancellor’s court at the University of Birmingham, in the suburb of Edgbaston. It is the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world.

In a lecture in 1945, Mr C. G. Burton, secretary of the University, stated that the tower stands 100 m high, the clock dials measure 5.2 m in diameter, the length of the clock hands are 10 and 3.0 and 1.8 m, and the bell weighs 5 long tons.

The tower was built to commemorate Joseph Chamberlain, the first Chancellor of the University (with the commemoration being carved into the stone at the tower’s base), although one of the originally suggested names for the clock tower was the “Poynting Tower”, after one of the earliest professors at the University, Professor John Henry Poynting.

The base is solid concrete, 15.2 m square by 3.0 m thick, with foundations that extend 100 m below ground to ensure stability. Joyce of Whitchurch built the clock, the face of which is 5.25 m across, the largest bell weighs 6,177.5 kg with all the bells together weighing 20 long tons (20 tonnes); the minute hand is 4.1 m long, the hour hand is 61 cm across, the pendulum is 4.6 m long. The clock hands are made out of sheet copper. There are ten floors served by an electrical lift in the SW corner. The tower was built from the inside, without scaffolding, up to the level of the balcony.

It is built of Red Accrington brick with Darley Dale dressings and tapers from 8.8 m2 to 7.0 m below the balcony. Owing to its having been built from the inside it was not pointed and had to be pointed in 1914 and was subsequently repointed in 1957 and 1984–85. Its weight, solid brick corners linked by four courses of brick resists the overturning wind forces.

According to wikipedia