Parish documents relating to clocks
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Selected transcripts & extracts
This part of the site contains selected transcripts and extracts exemplifying the various types of documents referred to in these pages.
The costs of a new clock
The detail in which churchwardens recorded their spending varied greatly. The installation of some new clocks was covered in a single, bald line: ‘for the new clock ... £9’. At the other extreme, especially where running accounts were regularly created from the vouchers or other records of individual transactions, several dozen separate and dated payments may be recorded, specifying the tasks or materials linked to each. Where all spending was disaggregated to this extent the sheer volume of activity documented is formidable. The wardens of of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East in London, for example, recorded over _____ hundred separate items of expenditure in _____. The churchwardens at Wantage were less forthoming than that, but illustrate the level of detail often available.
Follow the link to access the transcribed items
Wantage, 1685-6.
Maintenance agreements
These documents are agreements between churchwardens, acting on behalf of a parish, and a clocksmith, binding the clocksmith to a series of obligations regarding the clock. Typically these agreements were intended to operate over several years maintaining the clock and coming promptly to repair it should it break down. Agreements set out, though the details were often assumed, what would constitute satisfactory performance, response times, and the like. Penalties for inadequate fulfillmient of the clocksmith's obligations were sometimes spelled out, and could be severe. In return the clocksmith received either an annual fee or (less often) a lump sum payment. Typically new contracts accompanied the construction of a new clock (as an integral part of supplying the clock), major alterations, the adding of chiming mechanisms or new dials, or they could he precipitated by the death of an existing contractor.
Hundreds of these documents survive, sometimes alongside churchwardens’ accounts, sometimes preserved in vestry books. In the absence of accounts, maintenance agreements may provide the clearest and earliest evidence for a clock's existence. The earliest example located thus far is for Cropredy (Oxfordshire) in 1512. The routine character of maintenance agreements is nicely demonstrated by the inclusion of one among the stock of model legal agreements maintained by a Northamptonshire attorney around 1700.
Follow the links to access the relevant maintenance agreement
Crewkerne, 1701.
Market regulations using clock-time
Though churches were the preeminent location of clocks in late-medieval and early modern England, some of the readiest uses of hour-striking were material rather than spiritual. Medieval local authoritires had long used monastic ringing of service hours as time-cues, but these were relatively rapidly replaced by regular hour-striking. This was expecially so in connection with the regulation of markets, where medieval regulation of market opening and closing times, and an reerving an initial period for private purchasers over those buying to process grain for sale (e.g. bakers, brewers, innkeepers), were switched to clock-time. In major cities the change was largely complete in the fourteenth century, and seems widespread in small towns by the early sixteenth century, as at Guildford (Surrey).
Follow the link to access the relevant bye-laws
Guildford, 1526.
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 link to access the English Parish Clocks database.
Please follow this link to access the English Parish Clocks database.