UK-WATCHMAKERS-L Archives

From: "Carol Woolley" <>
Subject: [WATCH] from Watchmakers museum....and George.
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 08:58:19 +1200

I wrote and thanked George for the wonderful and everyone has found friendly and so fast help he has given.....and he included this in his reply.

One of the things to stress is that the Clockmakers'
Company (founded in 1631) is a City of London Livery Company (or guild)
which was granted the powers to protect the monopoly of the makers
within London, in return for enforcing a strict code of behaviour and
high quality in its products. In theory in the early days makers HAD to
join to practice, but they resented the fees payable, and as time
passed, they became more and more adept at avoiding the Company.

So two things - (1) huge numbers of makers by the 19th century were not
members and therefore do not appear in my records. (2) Provincial makers
were not involved with the Company at all.

Unfortunately large numbers of people write to ask about makers from
outside London - can only check the standard reference works. These incidentally are listed on www.clockmakers.org under "how
old is my clock?".

This thread:

• [WATCH] from Watchmakers museum....and George. by "Carol Woolley" <>