The Clockmakers’ Museum in London, England, is believed to be the oldest collection specifically of clocks and watches in the world. The collection belongs to and is administered by the Clockmakers’ Charity, affiliated to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, founded in 1631 by Royal Charter. Since 2015 it has been housed in a gallery provided by the Science Museum in South Kensington, having formerly been located in the Guildhall complex in the City of London since 1874, where it first opened to the public. Admission is free.
The formation of the collection dates back to 1814. The principal goal of the museum is to educate the public about the history of the field of clock and watchmaking (horology), principally in the City of London, and also to promote education and career possibilities in the craft of horology, which as of 2019 was placed on the HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts. The Archive of the Clockmakers is managed on its behalf by the London Metropolitan Archive and is located at Guildhall Library, where the Library collection of printed books is also held and managed.
History
The Clockmakers Company first established a library collection in 1814, under the control of a library committee, in which Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy soon emerged as the most prominent figure, remaining so for several decades. Early meetings were held at Vulliamy's premises in Pall Mall, London but in 1817 the Company acquired a mahogany bureau and bookcase from Gillows of Lancaster and London, to house its growing collection, and this was established in an upper room in the Kings Head Tavern in Poultry, London, where the Company had its meetings from 1802 to 1851. From 1815, the collection had expanded from books to include horological exhibits, among which an early acquisition was a set of pallets from an escapement by Alexander Cumming, bought by Vulliamy at auction, and which are still on display, on the Gillows bookcase.
With the deaths of BL Vulliamy and George Atkins, Clerk to the Company, in the 1850s, the collection lost its key advocates and supporters, but the fortunes of the museum were reversed with the construction of a new building for Guildhall Library in the early 1870s. At the invitation of the Guildhall authorities, the Clockmakers’ Museum was moved there and opened to the public from 1873. A first catalogue was written by William Henry Overall in 1875. In 1891, The Rev Harry Leonard Nelthropp, a key supporter of the museum, persuaded the Company to acquire one of the most important items in the modern collection, John Harrison’s fifth marine timekeeper, H5. In 1894, Nelthropp donated his entire personal collection of watches, clocks, sundials, seals and related ephemera to the Museum. Charles Welch produced a new catalogue in 1902.
In 1936, the Clockmakers asked the noted engineer and horologist Granville Hugh Baillie to create a new catalogue. Baillie rearranged the museum between mid-1937 and mid-1938. During the Second World War the collection was dismantled and stored off-site under the guidance of Guildhall Librarian James Lungley Douthwaite. Baillie produced a guide in 1939 and updated the catalogue in 1949.
The museum moved to the new Guildhall Library in 1976, and, in anticipation, Cecil Clutton and George Daniels produced a new catalogue of the clock and watch collection, while John Bromley, a Guildhall Librarian, produced a new catalogue of the Library collection.