Puzzling Time
Clocks are perennially puzzling. I was delighted to be presented with this characterful relic the other day when visiting a clock customer. First impressions are of an Act of Parliament tavern clock and the dial is made from diagonal wooden planks with painted finish including the numbers and 'Tempus fugit'; but in fact it is a long, thin and free-standing long case. The plinth is missing and the picture of the long thin case, with a bird design painted in the same style as the dial, shows the marks at the bottom where the plinth fixed.
So the case was just to hide the descending weight on a rope?
If it was a tavern clock one could expect a longcase-style movement and indeed what looks like a seatboard suggests that there was one. Except it isn’t the seatboard but the top of the thin case with a slot for the rope.
The movement itself is smaller, carriage clock sized, supported on two steel straps fixed to the back of the dial. The escapement is crown wheel and verge, except the verge, crutch and pendulum is missing. It is driven by the rope around the spiked drive wheel, which directly operates the motion work with a pinion outside the front of the plate, while the attached great wheel operates the escapement inside the plates through a centre wheel and a contrate wheel.
As well as the missing components in the movement it is missing any hands too. So there I was puzzling away trying to make sense of it all; even looking at the newspaper it was wrapped in, dated 1985, to try and get some clues, when the owner suddenly produced some yellowed mono pictures; probably themselves 50 years old.
These included an operational picture of the movement with verge and small bob pendulum together with a full length picture of it in operation, featuring a prominent single hand! Accompanying the pictures is a letter from the Victoria & Albert Museum dated 1971 stating that it was unusual to find these timepieces in the form of a long case and saying that the base looked 'rather strange'.
Further research is on-going; watch this space.