Interesting Observation on mid 19th C English Watchmaking.

[DaveyG]

Perhaps I should add to the header "I think".

I was recently shown an 1860/70's English made, full plate fusee driven watch that had been placed with the local watch repairers for overhaul. I was asked what the stampings on the pillar plate meant. I won't bore you with yet another explanation of the markings but to point out that the movement maker's mark is that of John Wycherley, working either in Prescot, Lancashire or, possibly, Birmingham (I neglected to harvest the hall mark data). The name MARLOW is not one that I had seen previously, in fact I don't recall a 'model' identifier being stamped on a pillar plate previously.

When I dropped in again, to the shop, a few days later I was shown the watch after cleaning and a donor watch (from the scrap movement box) that had been used to furnish a replacement centre wheel and escape wheel. This one, clearly the same raw movement design, also stamped MARLOW but by a different movement maker. In this case, probably, William Brown of Ecclestone, Lancashire.

Apart from the fact that it seems that a different coding method for defining the dimensions of the movement was used it seems to be a common design of movement made in different locations. I don't think that this is a feature of the English trade that is well known; I have certainly never witnessed this before.

Any views, opinions or added knowledge would be much appreciated.

Incidentally, John Gabriel Jones of Pwllheli I can not find listed anywhere so is, presumably, a retailer.

 

[eric the bully]

regards enrico

 

[DaveyG]

Thanks Enrico, you are an investigative inspiration. I still would say that Jones was most likely just a retailer who, in the manner of most of them, liked to call himself a watchmaker. I have recorded five different watchmakers in Pwllheli in the mid to late 19thC, and that in a town that must have had a population then of no more than one thousand and less than 4000 now.

 

[gmorse]

Hi Davey,

Thanks Enrico, you are an investigative inspiration...

Here here to that!

I have recorded five different watchmakers in Pwllheli in the mid to late 19thC ...

Out of interest, how many were called Jones?

I don't believe that the English trade was organised in terms of local "watchmakers" producing complete movements at any time in the C19th or for much of the C18th.

The name MARLOW is not one that I had seen previously, in fact I don't recall a 'model' identifier being stamped on a pillar plate previously.

Me neither!

Regards,

Graham

 

[DaveyG]

Out of interest, how many were called Jones?

Well, there's a funny thing, 3 out of the 5 were Jones', but I guess that is roughly typical of the total population of N Wales

I don't believe that the English trade was organised in terms of local "watchmakers" producing complete movements at any time in the C19th or for much of the C18th.

Quite so Graham, but I don't recall previously seeing two movements of the same design being made by different movement makers and neither can I recall, prior to the Lancashire Watch Company's appearance, raw movements being defined by a name. This is the aspect of these two movements that I find intriguing and suspect that it might offer a previously unexplored (and probably unexplorable) method of operation. We do know that John Wycherly started the Interchangeable Lever Watch Co. in Birmingham, I believe in the 1860's, and was quite unpopular with his contempories for supplying movements that were almost finished rather than in the grey. Maybe this is at the root of this "discovery".

 

[Tom McIntyre]

It is interesting to speculate what sort of commercial structure would create a "model" name that was common to multiple makers.

We see such things much later with government contracts let to multiple manufacturers but who would have sourced the model specification or even rough design.

The great English furniture designers published workbooks of designs that were then copied by many craftsmen, but not at the level of "fit to a design" as the Marlow implies.

A similar phenomenon occurred in American clock making with common templates that have shown up in the last 20 years that were likely used by multiple makers to improve mutual support within the industry or region.

The implication of this pair of observations is that there existed somewhere a model of that ebauche or more completed movement that was followed by multiple makers. What we need now is for someone to find the "Prescott Design Book" that would have been published quietly and shared in the trade. We already know from artifacts that ebauches were available at multiple levels of completeness and finish and the precise dimensions of these must have been published if a watchmaker were planning to combine material from two or more sources.

 

[RON in PA]

An English 19th century precursor of the modern Chinese "Standard" movement? Very interesting observation DaveyG.