W&MHS Cardi Cranks Vintage Show and Autumn Meeting in Grosmont

Cardi Cranks Vintage Show 10th August 2025

A Sunny August day brought a fantastic crowd to the Cardi Cranks Vintage Show at Llanerchaeron (National Trust) near Aberaeron, on the West Wales coast. Society members manned our own stall promoting the Society and exhibiting pieces from their own collections. It was a great turn out and through the members enthusiastic engagement with the public gained us 5 new memberships for the year! Da iawn pawb!

 

Grosmont Autumn Meeting 5th October 2025

We were joined for the fourth time by restorer, collector and published historian, Dennis Radage, who spoke about his personal collection and his conservation of a Charles Gretton lantern clock, which he believes was once part of the Wetherfield collection.

Operating out of his basement workshop, despite having retired, Dennis still has a significant number of customers. All work paused during the COVID period and Dennis undertook a massive project, stripping down, cleaning, and servicing almost all the clocks in his own home and collection, steadily working away on two or three at a time.

His collection is on display throughout the home and workshop, and clocks are stored and available for sale alongside his personal collection. A hoop-and-spike clock (c. 1790) by Sam Collins of Downend near Bristol and a lantern clock by Thomas Moore of Ipswich (c. 1710) are a couple of examples Dennis showed us from his collection. He also currently owns an Edward Dent long case regulator (No. 594, c. 1842, maker to the Queen, 82 Strand), which is illustrated in Derek Roberts' Precision Pendulum Clocks.

Dennis presented a virtual tour of his collection highlighting points of historical interest. In the hall are a Johnson bracket clock (c. 1780) is noted for having an enamel dial and marking the era when round dials began appearing and a John Smith of Pittenweem, Scotland (c. 1780) longcase, an early date for painted dials but interesting because the dial features gilt work mimicking spandrels in the corners.

Dennis showed us his cartel clock by Sam Jones of Bath (c. 1780), illustrated on the front cover of Neal White's book. This clock is unique; while the Royal Crescent Museum in Bath has a similar Jones cartel clock that strikes the hours, the speaker's version is a timepiece only. Research suggests four, identical, Sam Jones cartel clocks have been found and of further interest the cases for these clocks may have been made in Chippendale's workshop, a claim to investigate further!

In the living room, on the top floor, Dennis showed us six longcases, among them is a grand Erdley Norton musical clock (c. 1770) featuring 11 bells and 14 hammers, two long case marquetry clocks, one by Thomas Johnson (c. 1700) and one by Thomas Fordham (c. 1705) (kept primarily for the fine condition of their cases and not run). Other pieces include an early shield-type tavern clock (c. 1735) and a precision clock by James McCabe (early Regency period) with maintaining power and a jewelled duplex escapement.

 

Dennis then moved on to the background and conservative restoration of the once lost Charles Gretton lantern clock, designated LT01, from the David Wetherfield collection. Wetherfield amassed the collection of some 222 clocks over 40 years. His wealth came from his work as a senior partner in W.S. Partridge and Co, a successful coal merchant and marine insurance broker operating near Greenwich. Wetherfield’s collection included some of the greatest names in clockmaking. His eventual goal was for the collection to be sold as a complete lot and then donated to a museum. 

After the death of Wetherfield in 1928, the collection was sold by auction for £30,000. While sold as a single lot, it was purchased by a syndicate of three people: J Francis Mallet (antique dealer), Percy Webster (dealer-collector) and Arthur Vernay (furniture and clock dealer) and was subsequently divided 3 ways. 96 clocks from the joint purchase were taken to New York, departing from Wetherfields’ wishes for the collection to remain whole, and within the UK.

But who had LT01? A photograph taken for the 1928 auction catalogue by W.E.Hurcomb has been used repeatedly as a reference in major horological books up until 2020 because no other image existed. Through much research Dennis determined LT01 did not end up with Mallet (whose clocks were bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 1947) or to Webster (whose remaining clocks were later sold). The clock eventually turned up at an auction house in Cincinnati, Ohio, with provenance listed only as ‘belonging to a Midwestern Museum’, and Dennis purchased it. 

The clock arrived dirty and rusty, suggesting it had been donated, placed on a shelf for perhaps 50 years, and never restored. In his workshop Dennis identified the clock by microscopic examination of the engraving details and, crucially, a ‘birthmark’ on the top of the dial plate (a distinctive piece of corrosion), confirming it was the original lost Wetherfield Gretton.  For cleaning the brass parts, Dennis used a solvent-based strip solution to remove any old dye or lacquer coating without damaging the brass beneath. For the iron parts a mildly acidic solution effectively allowed the rust to be brushed off after five hours of soaking. No ultrasonics, ammonia, or aggressive cleaning solutions were used, as the primary objective was to preserve the historical authenticity and finish of the parts. 

During reassembly Radage utilized the small punch marks (one, two, three, or four dots) found on the finials, feet, and plates, which allowed everything to be put back together exactly as intended by the original maker.

The Gretton movement has crucifix movement bars and very thick top and bottom plates. The going train is conventional for the period, driving an hour wheel with a pinion of report, which in turn operates a 12-point star wheel and lifting piece to strike the hour. The clock was designed for a Huygens endless chain, indicating it was technologically "up to date". A key feature on the chapter ring is the use of adjoining arrowhead half-hour markers, typical of the 1690s. The restored Gretton lantern clock now runs very well.

Since publishing their book in 2016, Radage and his wife Laila have significantly increased the known inventory of Gretton’s work: 12 lantern clocks (up from 5), 91 long case clocks (up from 76), 56 spring clocks (up from 52), and 42 watches (up from 29)

 

Our second speaker was one of our members, Robert Lloyd-Richards an amateur enthusiast who has lived in France for 32 years and fallen in love with Comtoise clocks, also historically referred to as Morbier or Morez clocks. Robert claims the Comtoise clock is deeply significant to the French national psyche; according to the perspective of one elderly French woman, a "proper home" requires a fireplace and a Comtoise clock mounted against the wall.

The history of the clock is tied to the local geography of the Morbier area. Around 1660, the River Bien, flowing near the town of Morbier, became a power source facilitating a primitive kind of smelting process. The broader region had an established history of trade and manufacture. The town of Besançon (formerly Vesontio) was historically crucial as a manufacturing centre and by 1400, Besançon had become an important centre for trade and manufacture, including clocks. These conditions set the stage for the creation of the Comtoise.

The Comtoise clocks were typically sold as movements only, with cases being acquired or built much later, when affordable. The movement is notable for its robust, fixed construction within a ‘birdcage frame’ that cannot be dismantled. However, one of the benefits of the Comtoise movement is that the strike side and the time side can both be dismantled independently without affecting the other. Comtoise are typically weight driven, with a few exceptions such as ‘Vineyard’ clocks being spring-driven. Their escapements vary over time but prove unhelpful with dating the Comtoise precisely as the escapements seem to have been interchanged even through to more recent times.

A defining feature of the Comtoise clock is its striking mechanism: they all double-strike (or repeat the strike). The clock first strikes the hour, and then, after a brief pause (often two minutes), it strikes the hour again. The strike is usually produced by a hammer hitting the inside of a bell, rather than the outside. This feature is historically significant because it was helpful to workers in fields or people trying to verify the time at night without lighting a candle. The strike is notoriously loud!

The dials are usually round and almost always incorporate a calendar, as knowing the day was considered historically more crucial than knowing the exact minute. The inscription on the dial names the clock seller, not the maker, and the place name refers to the town where the clock was sold. Dials typically use Roman numerals and often display decorative numeral plates, or cartouches, which are frequently raised brass, although sometimes painted to look raised.

The decorative front sheets, or frontons, come in two shapes: flat-bottomed and elliptical. These frontons, of pressed brass, regardless of whether they are simple or elaborate, invariably convey a social story. Themes often depicted include the Revolution (which helps date the clock to periods like 1789 or 1792), specific religious stories (such as Joseph and the boy Jesus), agricultural scenes (like the grape harvest or vendage), and themes of young love. The hands are not useful for dating the clock, as any style could have been used during any period.

Cases were usually constructed from pine, often stained or painted to look like oak. Common styles include the ‘pot-bellied case’, and if a case is described as Horloge Supérieur, the term supérieur simply means ‘bigger’ or ‘tall drop’, indicating size rather than superior quality. A quirky design feature in most cases is the bowing out of the case sides (sometimes called ‘cheeks’). This curvature first appeared before the end of the 18th century, intending to give the impression that extra space was needed for the pendulum to swing. Robert points out that the pendulum's arc rarely reaches into this extra space, making this recognizable shape a "quirky bit of inventive logic”.

Robert urged clock enthusiasts not to dismiss Comtoise clocks, but to appreciate them as a piece of French life and culture and to see them as "very beautiful things, very loud and very French".

 

Our afternoon speaker was Dr Emily Akkermans who took us on a journey exploring the development, use and management of marine chronometers in the Royal Navy between 1819 and 1836. Using records from a selection of expeditionary voyages from the period between 1820 and 1850, she focused on how officers adopted, understood, and standardized these instruments as tools of navigation, chart making, and science.

Emily began with Captain Basil Hall’s 1820 call for every naval vessel to be equipped with a reliable chronometer, and for British ports to have ‘chronometer depots’ established, so that routine use of chronometers could become part of a navigation officers training. Through the experiences of key figures such as William Parry, Henry Foster, William Owen, and Robert Fitzroy, she showed how training and practice shaped chronometer use. Officers like Parry and Foster, trained by scientists such as Henry Kater (rather than within the naval training system of the period), developed meticulous habits of observation, record-keeping, and comparison, while Fitzroy and others benefited from the emerging formal education of the Royal Naval College. An astronomer also accompanied all the early surveying expeditions to ensure no opportunity for scientific work was missed. It was fascinating to learn that after his naval college training, Robert Fitzroy began his scientific naval career at 14 years of age, and at 19 was promoted to lieutenant; he was later described by one of his midshipmen as ‘one of the best officers in the service… one of the best seamen… and possessed a fondness for every kind of observation useful in navigating a ship’.

Emily told us of the debate about differing methods for storing and protecting chronometers from outside influence, from suspended ‘cots’ to gimballed tables, and packing in soft materials like wool and sawdust; there was also an on-going debate over how best to mitigate temperature, ship’s motion, and magnetic interference. Sadly, none of these experimental ‘apparatus’ appear to have survived. Failures, repairs, and the challenge of judging a “good” chronometer were also recurring themes, as were questions of trust in both instruments and observers.

The management of data, via comparison books, rate tables, and meridian distance calculations, was central to validating the measurements obtained and Emily showed us photographs of primary records from the period. In 1840 Henry Raper published The Practice Of Navigation & Nautical Astronomy, and in 1855 Captain Charles Shadwell published a lengthy instructional manual focussing on the use and management of chronometers for navigational purposes. The work of these “scientific servicemen” over the first half of the 19th century helped transform naval navigation into a data-driven and standardized practice, linking seafaring with the broader advancement of nineteenth-century science.