Re: A very early Clock Maker

A couple of years ago I heard a talk by Paul Glennie of Bristol
University about how widespread clocks were in the late medieval and
early modern period. He has spent years collecting references to clocks
in parish churchwardens' accounts, and it turns out that they were far
more common, at much earlier dates, than I for one had ever imagined.

It seems the first large mechanical clocks for installation in public
buildings, to serve whole communities, were developed in the 1270s.
However few churchwardens' accounts survive from that time (none at all
before 1400?), so Glennie's data all relate to much later periods - from
which he said:

By about 1530 nearly every town had a public clock. In single parish
towns over 90% had a clock, but in multi-parish towns only 40% of

joe...

No doubt aided by the invention of the spring clock in the mid-1400s.
Prior to this, "town clocks" I suspect were mostly extremely poor time
keepers, and therefore, rather a rarity. A clockmaker in 1400/1401 did
probably have a limited set of people to learn this trade from. The
earliest references I have seen for such large clocks date to the mid
to late 13th century and no earlier.

parishes had one - but of course that meant there was at least one clock
in nearly every town. More surprisingly, roughly 40% of rural parishes
already had a public clock by about 1550. He also showed, by quotes
from a number of early sources (eg the 1480s Stonor papers), that the
ability to tell the time precisely, by reference to public clocks, was
widespread and commonplace, not just in towns but also in the
countryside.

And of course he was only counting parish clocks - there were others,
supplied by other institutions. For example, mid-15th century
Stratford-on-Avon had three public clocks, one in the parish church and
two provided by guild fraternities. I didn't note it, but I have an
idea he commented that clocks were particularly common in monasteries
(like Werrington Priory, no doubt), in fact he may even have said that
they were first developed by monastic institutions.

Interestingly few of these early clocks had dials - until the 18th
century chimes were the normal method of indicating the time.

Matt Tompkins