Bishop Stortford
The churchwardens’ accounts for this Hertfordshire market town, close to the Essex border, provide an excellent example of the mix of routine and exceptional payments to be found in all parishes with church clocks.
The sorts of items found every year, generating the base-flow of spending were part and parcel of the clock's normal working. To more recent eyes this spending has often seemed evidence of the unreliability of late-medieval or early modern clocks that stood in constant need of repair, but this is a fundamental mis-reading of the degree of human intervention entailed in these clocks' normal working. What has been taken as ‘mending’ the clock is much better understood as ‘minding’ the clock. Most church clocks in the sixteenth-century, for example, did require winding every day, frequent oiling, cleaning off the build up of grease and dirt, and re-setting with reference to a sun-dial. This was why their keepers or minders, often the sexton or parish clerk, received an annual payment of several shillings for their care of the clock. The related purchases of linseed or other oil, grease, wire, and the like accounted for only a few pence a year.
Periodically, though, clocks required more expensive attention and the expertise of a specialist craftsmen. This was often a specialist clocksmith, but could be a specialist in a related area of metalworking, such as a locksmith or a gunsmith. Often, work on a clock's drive or gearing and on the clock-frame (which might be of wood or metal) were carried out together.
Figure 6.