Lyttelton Timeball Station, Time ball station in Lyttelton, New Zealand.

Lyttelton Timeball Station is a castle-like complex of local scoria and lighter Oamaru stone, with an octagonal tower holding a 1.5-metre zinc time ball on an Oregon pine mast. The tower was rebuilt between July 2017 and November 2018 after the original collapsed in the 2011 earthquake; the clock came from Edward Dent and Co. in London and the ball mechanism from Siemens Brothers of Germany.

John Thomas Peacock's 1870 proposal to the Canterbury Provincial Council led to Thomas Cane's design, completed in 1876 as New Zealand's third time ball station after Wellington and Dunedin. The first ball drop on 29 November 1876 ran three minutes late due to an electromagnet fault. The ball fell daily at 1 PM until 31 December 1934; the tower collapsed on 13 June 2011 and was rebuilt between July 2017 and November 2018.

The site is nicknamed the Castle on the Hill, and its flag signalling system, older than the time ball itself, sent messages to ships and news of arrivals to the town until 1941. Between 2003 and 2009 a Jack Russell terrier cross named Skippy came to bark at the ball until it dropped at 1 PM; a sculpture of Skippy was unveiled here in 2019.

The tower stands on a hill above Lyttelton Harbour, and the rebuilt structure reopened to the public in November 2018. The time ball mechanism was set to drop at 1 PM daily, except on days of very strong wind. The site is a short uphill walk from the town centre, and the Skippy sculpture unveiled in 2019 stands nearby.

The time mechanism was originally made in Germany and works by dropping a metal ball at the same moment each day to show the exact time. This design allowed captains to check their chronometers before heading out to sea.