Greater Manchester Clocks & Clockmakers

Author: Edmund Davies

342 pages.

This book is a detailed study of clockmaking and watchmaking, and the craftsmen and women who worked in the trade in Greater Manchester, which includes the towns of Salford, Stockport, Oldham, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Wigan.

Until the rise of the textile industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought increased prosperity, there was little horological activity in the area. By the start of the Industrial Revolution, led by Lancashire's booming cotton industry, in the middle of the eighteenth century, accurate timekeeping became a necessity and numerous highly skilled clockmakers and watchmakers set up in business in Manchester and its neighbouring towns.

Introductory chapters discuss turret clocks on churches and public buildings, watchmaking, lantern clocks, as well as a detailed discussion of the characteristics of longcase clocks made in Southeast Lancashire and Northeast Cheshire. Public clocks in the city of Manchester and the lives of some notable clockmakers are considered, while there are details of over 3,700 clockmakers and watchmakers from the earliest records to the end of the nineteenth century.

Appendices include a list of craftsmen listed by town, while extracts from inventories give information on the ownership of clocks and watches in the seventeenth century. Other appendices include the significance of the Townley Group of early scientists, the scientific shows and lectures that took place in Manchester in the eighteenth century, details of many of the region's public clocks, and the special timekeepers that were developed for use in cotton mills.

With almost 270 illustrations, this book is an essential reference for horologists and local historians alike.