Clocks · Long-case clock
Oak Cased Thirty-hour Longcase Clock
- Maker / attribution
- William Porthouse (Made by)
- Date
- 1760–1770
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- British Isles
- Place
- Penrith (England)
- Object type
- Long-case clock
- Materials / technique
- oak, brass, steel
- Dimensions
- Height: 199 centimetres (case) Width: 58 centimetres (case) Depth: 29 millimetres (case)
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 2010,8029.26
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Oak Cased Thirty-hour Longcase Clock (English)
View the source record ↗ (opens another website in a new tab)Suggest a correction
Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 2010,8029.26), this is a long-case clock by William Porthouse, made in Penrith (England), British Isles, dated 1760–1770. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: oak, brass, steel. Recorded dimensions: Height: 199 centimetres (case) Width: 58 centimetres (case) Depth: 29 millimetres (case). The record is illustrated with 2 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Description — British Museum
Oak Cased Thirty-hour Longcase Clock. Case: Plain oak case with forward-sliding hood with a flat top and a plain frieze. Two free-standing ringed and turned pillars to the sides of the hood and two half pillars to the rear. The hood door has a brass knob. The plain trunk has a hinged door with a shaped top and no escutcheon around the brass finished key hole. Plain base standing on bracket feet. Dial: ‘Cartwheel’ pierced square brass dial plate with eight removed segments underneath the chapter-ring. Four applied gilt-brass cherub-head and scrolls spandrels. Silvered-brass chapter ring with Roman numerals I-XII and half-hour stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks, within a circle calibrated 0-60 for minutes and with meeting-arrow marks for the quarters and Arabic numerals at five-minute intervals. The area inside the chapter ring is matted. In the upper half is a silvered-brass circular cartouche with a banded border and engraved maker’s name and place. In the lower half is a square aperture revealing a silvered-brass disc numbered 1-31 for the date. Blued-steel hour and minute hands. Movement: Weight-driven thirty-hour movement within rectangular brass plates and four single-knop and ringed brass pillars. Brass sprockets and shrouds for Huygens endless chain maintaining power. Going train with two wheels, each with four crossings. Anchor escapement, the escape wheel with four crossings. Pendulum control, the pendulum with plain steel rod and brass-fronted lead bob. Striking train with three brass wheels, the wheels with four crossings, and a fly pinion with a brass vane. Striking for hours is controlled by a brass count-wheel mounted on the back plate and retained by a rectangular brass tension spring. Hours are struck on a bell mounted on a standard screwed to the back plate. Motion work: The motion work consists of a brass wheel mounted on the great-wheel arbor which drives a brass canon pinion, running on a stud on the front plate. This pinion carries the minute hand. Also mounted on the great-wheel arbor is a brass pinion which drives the hour wheel which carries the hour hand. A flag on the hour wheel pipe indexes the calendar wheel to advance the date. The drive chain passes around a solid brass pulley and through a lead ‘doughnut’ counter-weight.
Inscriptions & marks
inscription; cartouche below XII; William Porthouse PENRITH
Provenance
Donated by:, Michael Grange; Acquired 2010
Historical context
Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
Harrison solves longitude; Mudge invents the lever; Breguet's Paris workshop defines the modern watch.
The age of the deadbeat escapement, compensated pendulums and observatory regulators. Domestic clocks spread through the middle classes: English longcase and bracket clocks, French gilt-bronze mantel clocks, Viennese Biedermeier wall clocks, Black Forest painted-shield clocks, and the first American shelf clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Early Modern Horology
Atlas type guide
Longcase (tall-case or grandfather) clocks
The longcase clock was born from two seventeenth-century innovations: Christiaan Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) and the anchor escapement (c. 1670). A long seconds pendulum, nearly a metre long, swings with a small arc, and enclosing it together with the driving weights in a tall wooden case protected the mechanism and created a new piece of furniture. London makers such as Ahasuerus Fromanteel, Thomas Tompion and Joseph Knibb set the pattern.
By the eighteenth century longcase clocks were made throughout Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia (the Swedish Mora clock), France (the Comtoise from the Franche-Comté), Germany and colonial America. Eight-day movements with two weights became standard in better clocks; thirty-hour clocks with one weight and a rope or chain were cheaper alternatives.
What to look for
- Winding holes in the dial: two (eight-day, going and striking) or none (thirty-hour, pulled up by a chain).
- Brass dials with applied chapter rings (earlier) versus painted iron 'white' dials (after c. 1770 in Britain).
- Moon-phase arches, date apertures, seconds dials and maker's name on the dial.
- Case woods and style: ebonised, walnut marquetry, lacquer, oak or mahogany; regional styles from London, Lancashire, Scotland or America.
- Whether the movement and dial match the case — 'marriages' are common.
Dating clues
- Square brass dials suggest c. 1670–1720; arched brass dials c. 1715–1790.
- Painted (white) dials were made by Birmingham dial-makers from about 1772.
- Comtoise clocks with repoussé pendulums are mostly nineteenth century.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:Deadbeat escapementAnchor escapement
Related records
Clocks · 1760–1770
Thirty-Hour Longcase clock
British Museum
Clocks · c. 1780
Longcase clock by Louis George, Eberswalde, c. 1780
Museum Eberswalde
Clocks · 1780s (inferred: the museum dates the style to the 1780s and the music includes Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride of 1779)
Musical longcase clock, Roentgen workshop, Neuwied, 1780s
Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe
Clocks · 1740–1760
Longcase clock, English, 1740–1760, japanned wood, John Ellicott
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Clocks · 1740–60
Tall clock by Samuel Bagnall, United States, 1740–60
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Clocks · c.1750
Long-case clock, English, ca. 1750, by Richard Peyton of Gloucester
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Clocks · 1750–1800
Bracket clock in metal case with scroll handles and flamed-shaped top signed by Pierre Seignoret, Clockmaket to the the Comte d'Artois
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Clocks · c. 1750
Clock by Georg Gfell, Germany, c. 1750
German Clock Museum