Discover the world’s oldest clock and watch collection in its new home at the Science Museum.
The collection includes more than 600 watches, 90 clocks, 30 marine chronometers and a number of fine sundials and examples of hand engraving, mapping the history of innovation in watch and clock making in London from 1600 to the present day.
Assembled by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers and once located in the Guildhall, this remarkable array of timepieces traces the story of the capital’s clockmakers—from their first marine chronometers and mechanical clocks through the evolution of the wristwatch. New interactive exhibits reveal how clockwork mechanisms can be used to create music and decorative automata.
Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy: A champion of British craftsmanship
Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy was five-times Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, a champion of British craftmanship and a driving force behind the formation of the Clockmakers’ Museum. This new display reveals Vulliamy’s mastery through a collection of his world-class work, including many items rarely displayed in public before.
Discover treasures like a magnificent and imposing mahogany wall clock from the 19th century, and see Vulliamy’s ornate neo-Rococo clock cases, made with porcelain and tortoiseshell to suit the tastes of the Regency period. Not to be missed, this display is an opportunity to learn the story of the last of the great Vulliamy family of Royal clockmakers, and to witness the variety and remarkable quality of his work firsthand.
Also on display
John Harrison was the inventor of the marine chronometer. Among the collection’s highlights is the fifth chronometer he made, which he completed in 1770, and a four-month duration longcase clock by the father of English watchmaking, Thomas Tompion.
An intricate British-made watch, the Space Traveller II, is now on display. Watchmaker George Daniels made almost every part of this watch by hand in the early 1980s.
