National Scale Mapping of Early Modern Parish Clocks

There is no single source of information that provides a comprehensive picture of English church clocks. The most promising starting point at local level is provided by the accounts kept by parish churchwardens, of their spending on behalf of parish communities. The appearance of spending on clocks in these accounts is not because clocks fulfilled a religious function, but reflects the convenience of church towers as points from which to signal the hours, and the diverse uses of time signals in everyday life.

This site maps all known churchwardens' accounts up to 1700, and indicates the presence (or not) of church clocks, and something of their character. For selected areas, much more detailed information is available here, the coverage of which will subsequently extend nationwide.

The degree of documentation

The first theme is the scope and degree of documentation of the available documents, and their location and availability. Being able to characterise the available evidence in this way is important for any systematic use of churchwardens’ accounts, since their survival varies so much across space and time. Any comparison of information in accounts should be able to identify how the available evidence varies over time, or among areas, in order to distinguish genuine changes or contrasts in the things or practices being investigated from changes that result from changes in the numbers and types of parish communities that are documented.

Two dimensions here: first, the degree of detail or aggregation in the accounts; and second, the proportion of accounts that survive. The degree of detail or aggregation obviously affects how visible any particular facet of religious or secular parish practices is from the accounts. The annual framework of the wardens’ responsibilities to the parish shaped a framework of reporting and auditing that generated various records of spending and financial commitments. In some form, even if only as a collection of receipts and loose memos, wardens kept rough working records of financial commitments. These were formalised into an annual account ¹ presented to the parish community, usually represented (loosely represented, that is) by the sub-group of higher-status parishioners forming the vestry, or one of its less formal precursors – groups referred to by such labels as ‘the twenty-four’. Heavily abbreviated summary accounts were sometimes compiled, providing a more compact documentary archive for the future administrators of the parish.

In an archive catalogue, ‘churchwardens’ accounts’ may refer to any of the three types of record produced at these different stages of the annual accounting cycle. In a sense, of course, they all are churchwardens; accounts, but their utility for systematic investigation clearly varies. This database is concerned with the second category of these three, that is, the churchwardens’ consolidated annual account. The various bills, receipts, and memos from which they were compiled may provide more detail of particular spending, but usually they were discarded once the account had been presented and audited. They survive relatively rarely. On the other hand, the abbreviated summaries of accounts are the most widely surviving, especially where incorporated into minute books and other formal preservation that afforded better physical protection to the loose or pinned sheets. However, the obvious difficulty with these summaries is equally disabling: They are so much more compressed than the annual accounts that most of the specifics are lost altogether.

The database describes the degree of documentation from churchwardens’ annual accounts before 1700. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this information is summarised for every decade – strictly for ten-year periods 1560-1569, 1570-1579, etc., rather than 1561-1570). A simple categorisation of whether accounts are available for just one, a few, most, or all years in that ten years.

The second theme is the presence and nature of parish church clocks within the accounts. The most basic question is whether any money was spent on maintaining a clock in the church. Then there is the nature of the time-signalling associated with the clock mechanism, besides the bell on which hours were struck, which remained the central feature of any early modern public clock. Were there chimes, and/or the striking of quarter-hours? Did the clock have a dial-face and, if so, was it equipped with one hand or two? Were there particular hours, in particular the day-bell in the morning and the curfew bell in the evening, at which there was more sustained ringing, paid for by the churchwardens on behalf of the parish? In the last few decades of the period, are there signs of pendulums or other major technological innovations? Did the parish have a repair and maintenance contract with a clock-smith, and is this mentioned only in passing, or are there recorded details of the agreement and obligations?

It is in the nature of this combination of sources and questions that both the availability of documents and their ability to provide the answers to these questions are variable.

The database information can be searched and mapped with reference to various features of parishes.

Settlement type:

Rural, non-market parishes
These may quite populous, especially late in the seventeenth-century, because parish boundaries were re-drawn only occasionally, and did not keep pace with population growth. This was particularly true in the areas where rural industry was developing most rapidly, as in parts of the west midlands, Lancashire, and Yorkshire. Markets are those identified in volumes 4 and 5 of the Agrarian History of England and Wales (Thirsk, ed. 1967, 1985)

Single-parish market towns
These could be much smaller places than might be assumed today, perhaps with populations of only a few hundred, though some grew to very considerable size within their long-established boundaries. The market functions that distinguished them from rural parishes created a periodic activity that both drew people from a wider area beyond the parish itself, and required regulation by market or (loosely) civic authorities within the town. Any time-keeping necessary for these purposes was overwhelmingly likely to involve the parish church.

Multi-parish market towns
These were usually towns that had been relatively populous at an early date in their history, when parishes were coming into being before the medieval ossification of parish boundaries. While some such places had shrunk considerably by the sixteenth- or seventeenth centuries, most were larger than most single-parish markets. Such market-towns usually had one ‘prime’ church for administrative purposes. Documented parishes may be that ‘prime’ church, or among the ‘secondary’ parishes regarding the administration of central place functions.

Multi-parish county towns and similar places
These had a broader range of administrative and social functions, and correspondingly more diverse populations. They tended to be larger again than the ‘multi-parish markets’, but there was considerable overlap between the total populations sizes of this and the preceding category.

Provincial capitals
These stood higher still in the marketing, administrative, and experiential urban hierarchies of early modern England. They filled a wide range of roles in regional and national life, and often had wider overseas contacts.

London
The sheer scale of London and its prominence, if not dominance, of English economy, society, and culture made it a place recognised as distinct from anywhere else in the kingdom by most contemporaries. In terms of churchwardens’ accounts it is also extremely well-documented, and from an early date, compared with anywhere else in the country.

Parish populations in 1676

These figures are for the number of adults in the parish in 1676, they ecclesiastical survey now known as the ’Compton census’. Figures for some dioceses are missing or incomplete, but it is the fullest available count before the decennial census begun in 1801.

Maps can be generated for selected sub-sets of parishes according to their population, with a choice of the number of categories for mapping.
The ‘four category’ option splits parishes at ------------; the ‘ten category’ option splits parishes at ---------------------------.

¹ Practice varied, in that some parishes received separate accounts from each of their two churchwardens (whereas most received a combined account from the wardens jointly), and a minority of parishes received formal accounts either every six months or quarterly. For convenience, all the variants are incorpated within the expression ‘annual accounting cycle’ in this discussion.

Clocks through time

The main purpose of this page is an introduction to the interactive mapping that this website has developed. The dissemination of data for scholarly use is an important role, and here we present the first of a series of web pages. Please follow this this link to access the database and explanatory pages.