Clocks · Turret clock; weight-driven foliot clock
Turret clock, England, 1632-1640
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1632-1640
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- England, United Kingdom, England
- Object type
- Turret clock; weight-driven foliot clock
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- 1884-81
- Credit line
- On loan from English Heritage
- Catalogue title (original)
- Dover Castle turret clock
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number 1884-81), this is a turret clock; weight-driven foliot clock, made in England, United Kingdom, England, dated 1632-1640. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Clocks collection. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
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
Science Museum Group description
This is one of the few surviving public clocks that still uses its original foliot balance for its time control. Most foliot clocks were converted to pendulum control in the 1600s. A foliot balance is a horizontal weighted bar which is pushed in one direction (a ‘tick’) and then the other (a ‘tock’) by a crown-shaped toothed wheel, pulled round by a falling weight. The crown-shaped wheel is part of an ‘escapement’. The potential energy in the falling drive weight is allowed to escape a little at a time. All mechanical clocks have some form of escapement. This clock was probably made in London at the workshop of Leonard Tennant by one of his apprentices. It was found at Dover Castle in 1872 and became known as the 'Dover Castle turret clock'.
Science Museum Group description
This is one of the few surviving public clocks that still uses its original ‘foliot balance’ for its time control. Most foliot clocks were converted to pendulum control in the 1600s. A foliot balance is a horizontal weighted bar which is pushed in one direction (a ‘tick’) and then the other (a ‘tock’) by a crown-shaped toothed wheel, pulled round by a falling weight. The crown-shaped wheel is part of an ‘escapement’. The potential energy in the falling drive weight is allowed to escape a little at a time. All mechanical clocks have some form of escapement. This clock was removed from Dover Castle in 1872.
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) improved clock accuracy from about a quarter of an hour to under a minute a day. The anchor escapement (c. 1670) and the long seconds pendulum created the longcase clock; London makers such as Fromanteel, Knibb, Tompion and Quare led European clockmaking, and French makers created the Boulle pendule.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Turret, tower and public clocks
The first mechanical clocks of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were large iron striking clocks in towers, monasteries and cathedrals, driven by falling weights and controlled by a verge escapement with a foliot or wheel balance. They struck a bell rather than displaying the time, and only gradually acquired dials. Public clocks ordered civic life, regulating markets, work and worship.
From the seventeenth century the pendulum and then the anchor and pinwheel escapements made turret clocks far more accurate. In the nineteenth century firms such as Dent, Smith of Derby, Gillett & Johnston, J. F. Weule and Collin made cast-iron flatbed movements, and Edmund Beckett Denison's gravity escapement for the Great Clock of Westminster (1859) became the standard for accurate tower clocks.
What to look for
- Frame construction: early wrought-iron 'birdcage' or posted frames versus later cast-iron flatbed or plate-and-spacer frames.
- The escapement: verge and foliot, anchor, pinwheel or double three-legged gravity escapement.
- Striking and chiming trains with count wheels or rack striking.
- Maker's plates and dates cast or engraved on the frame.
Dating clues
- Wedged and riveted wrought-iron frames generally predate 1700.
- Flatbed cast-iron movements date from about 1840 onward.
- Electrical synchronisation and electric winding appear from about 1900.
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.
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