Wiltshire Clocks - a history

You can buy the first volume of a history of Wiltshire clock makers, called Wiltshire Watch and Clockmaker, Volume 1: Chippenham, Swindon, Marlborough and North Wiltshire by John Young.

This book is about the people who were engaged in the clock and watchmaking business in North Wiltshire from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

Foreword

By Mike Stone, Manager and Curator of Chippenham
Museum and Heritage Centre.

The earliest mechanical timekeeping clock for Wiltshire,
can still be seen in Salisbury cathedral and dates from
about 1386. Away from the church and nobles the
peasants in North Wiltshire would use nature's clock
to regulate their daily activities. By the 17th century
the first English lantern clocks were produced followed
shortly after by the addition of a pendulum which led
to the development of long case clocks.

By the beginning of the 18th century the aristocratic landowners and the emerging middle class, whose fortune was based on the weaving trade, began to demand clocks in their homes. In North Wiltshire, like most of the country in the 18th and early 19th century, there were numerous clock and watchmakers who worked to supply this demand.

This volume on Watch and Clockmakers in Chippenham, Marlborough, Swindon and north Wiltshire graphically charts these craftsmen along with their families and associates.

This insight into an important part of the industry of North Wiltshire will aid both researchers, collectors, family and local historians and those who just have a fascination with the history of mechanical timekeeping.

Chippenham Museum and Heritage Centre
10, Market Place
Chippenham
Wiltshire
SN15 3HF

Preface

Owners of clocks usually want to know the date that their clock was made and sooner or later about the person who made it. Scores of requests for information to the author and to museums and libraries proves this point. However clock owners are not the only interested group. The number of family and local historians looking for this kind of detail has increased dramatically over the last twenty years or so.

This is not a book about clocks, it is a book about the people who made and maintained them, and attempts to shed some light on their lives and activities. Whether the name on a clock is finely engraved or painted on a dial, or is printed on a gum-arabic label and attached to the case, the interest of the owner is the same. The arguments of the horologist about who is a maker, an assembler, repairer or dealer are generally of little interest to the owner of a clock. The author does not involve himself in these arguments and has chosen to include all those people who called themselves clockmakers, watchmakers, repairers or finishers whether they ran their own business or were employed by someone who did.

The book includes makers up to the first half of the 20th Century but goes beyond this where some sort of family or business continuity exists.

Although many years work has gone into researching Wiltshire clockmakers this book is only a beginning. There can never be a 'Complete Book of Wiltshire Clockmakers.' The author hopes that this book as well as providing useful information for those interested in clockmakers will also be a useful source book for further research and that perhaps other editions may be possible.

John Young
North Bradley
Wiltshire
2004

The cost is £12.99 + £2.50 Postage and Packing Orders, please make cheques to "J. Trueman", and send to:
Middledale Cottage
Litton Dale
Litton
Buxton
Derbyshire
SK17 8QL

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Email: books@wiltshireclocks.co.uk