THE HISTORY OF OWNERSHIP OF CLOCKS

THE HISTORY OF OWNERSHIP OF CLOCKS

While church and civic clocks permitted the public keeping of time in England, it is not until the eighteenth century that we see a marked increase in the private ownership of clocks, something that can be measured through probate inventories (which list the possessions of deceased individuals), which are a marvellous source for studying everyday life and the consumption of things.

In a comparative survey of Kentish and Cornish households in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was estimated that, in Kent, only I per cent of households owned a clock during the first half of the seventeenth century, but that by the 1740s over 78 per cent of households owned a clock. Cornwall, in contrast, yields only one example of a clock owned by the sampled households prior to the 1650s, and only about 12 per cent of households owning clocks by the mid-eighteenth century. This study shows that, in England, clocks were adopted on a large scale at the turn of the eighteenth century and also that the pattern varied from location to location.

Source ~ ‘History of Unexpected’ by Sam Wills and James Day Bell

Page: 111