Stock No.

Exhibit No.23

Dial

The 12½ inch (318 mm) square brass dial, signed Thomas Tompion, Londini Fecit along the lower edge of the dial plate below the silvered chapter ring with Roman hours, sword hilt half hour marks and Arabic minutes. The seconds ring, intersecting at XII, and engraved 6, 12, 18 etc. with every other second divided by an engraved line. Simply shaped but sturdy blued-steel hands and a coarsely matted centre.The dial secured to the frame via four pinned dial feet.

Movement

The substantial forged iron frame with rectangular-section bars secured by heavy square nuts, a lower section stamped with an L within an oval (for the Leufsta forge, Uppsala, Sweden). The 8 inch diameter wooden grooved barrels and steel arbors mounted within three pairs of vertical bars; the going-train bars extending above the outline of the frame to accommodate the escape wheel arbor and the pendulum suspension point; the strike-train bar forged in the form of a stylised Y to offer a secure point of fixing for the lower left hand dial foot, all wheels of finely finished brass with four crossings. The going train with anchor escapement and a two-part pendulum rod of heavy flat steel measuring 12 feet 10½ inches in length with a heavy horizontal lenticular lead bob, 13½ inches in diameter with a T-shaped threaded bar, the top of the bob with concentric line decoration and marked 1 to 12 for regulation, the strike train with a 9½ inch brass countwheel to the rear with a curved detent, regulated by a ratchet ‘fly’ terminating in a pair of small shape vanes. Together with three pairs of hands and lead-off work and framed motion work, with the original crank winder.
Overhauled in 2013 by the Cumbria Clock Company and, without altering the original Tompion mechanism, a compound light weight 2-second pendulum was designed to work on the new oak display stand (as pictured opposite).

Duration

8 days

Provenance

Probably originally ordered from Tompion by Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis of Eye (1655-1698) for Brome Hall, Suffolk;
Sold at the sale of contents of Brome Hall on 23 June 1953;
Sotheby’s, 29 May 1982, Sale of Nine Clocks, lot 6;
Bonham’s, 9 July 2013, lot 71, sold for £75,900;
John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.46

Literature

East Anglian Times, September 1953, Nixseaman, ‘Brome Hall Votive Clock
and Bell’, further correspondence followed on 18.6.1954 and 25.6.1954.
Horological Journal, Symonds, ‘Thomas Tompion’s Turret Clock’, February
1954, p.85-7, further correspondence followed in March 1954, p.172; April 1954, p.243; and June 1954, p.376;
Antiquarian Horology, July 1954, p.456, Society meeting held at the Science
Museum where the clock was exhibited, becoming the subject of debate,
continuing August 1954, p.507, and September 1954, p.50;
RW Symonds, Furniture Making in 17th and 18th century England, 1955, p.228-232, figs. 319-28;
Antiquarian Horology, 1976, ‘Iron Marks on Turret Clocks’, Berg and Nettell, p.78-81;
Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.65;
Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, p.344-345, 602

Escapement

Anchor with 2-second pendulum

Dimensions

Height 22¼ inches (565 mm), width 277 inches (690 mm), depth 157 inches
(385 mm)