LIVERMORE FALLS – Cheers, horns and applause sounded when the town’s century-old tower clock chimed Friday and started ticking again after years of silence.

The cold rain stopped long enough Friday night for a group of about 30 people to gather outside near Main Street to stare up at the clock on top of a four-story bank building waiting for the big moment.

Town Manager Martin Puckett and clocksmith Jim Bryant of Wayne could be seen from the ground through a tower window just below one of four faces of the clock.

Bryant repaired the clock, installing new gears, new cables and reinforcements for weights, and adding fluorescent bulbs to increase the candlepower to make the clock faces more visible, Puckett said.

The Seth Thomas clock was donated to the town in the early 1900s by the family of successful merchant Oliver Thompson, who grew up in Jay. He is believed to have been a bonnet-maker and had sold and bought straw in Massachusetts at one time before he died in 1901, Livermore historian Dennis Stires said.

The clock face that shines above Main Street was the only one of four left standing after fire tore through the then-Sharaf building in 1910. The other faces and the clock innards fell down through the shaft. Tradesmen then helped raise money to fix the clock. Three of the faces still have the inscription of the Thompson Memorial, Stires said. The fourth was broken in 1970 and replaced.

People returning from the many wars since the clock was installed knew they were home when they saw the lighted timepiece, Stires said to those gathered in the town office before walking up Main Street.

A color guard of veterans stood holding flags during the presentation of the history.

It was about three-and-a-half years ago that former Town Manager Alan Gove asked members of the Jay-Livermore Falls Rotary Club to help raise $20,000 to make repairs to the clock and maintain it, President Gordon Flint said during the celebration.

That group spearheaded the effort to raise about $7,500 with others, including businesses, community members and schoolchildren, pitching in. Town taxpayers also raised an additional $5,000 to help, while Flint, on behalf of the Rotary Club, donated another $500 Friday night.

In the 1950s, the clock and an adjacent bell sounded the town’s curfew at 9 p.m., and young people knew it was time to go home, Stires said.

Wayne Knowlton of Livermore Falls was one of those children.

“The clock is a seven-day clock,” Knowlton said. “It’s quite a thing; that clock is something else. The weights have to be pulled up once a week.”

Some of those waiting were skeptical at first when they could see the hands move forward and backward, the clock lights brighten and dim, and then the hands move to 5 and chime that many times before they moved past 6, stalled and went all the way around again, stopping at 5:20 before they moved to 6:15. The clock face lights then brightened, drawing praise from the audience.

“Four years ago, I moved here, and the first thing I did when I heard they were doing a clock restoration was volunteer to go take pictures and get involved in the fundraising,” Livermore Falls Betterment Group President Phil Poirier said.

“So this is kind of a neat full circle for me and a great success for the town seeing this symbol come back to life,” he said.