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Rural Clockmaking in Eighteenth-Century Wales: Samuel Roberts of Llanfair Caereinion, 1755–1774
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2012
Abstract
With the recent publication of David S. Landes's Revolution in Time (1983) the business of clockmaking has begun to receive the scholarly attention that its historical significance warrants. In this finely etched case study, Mr. Davies draws on a remarkable business record—Samuel Roberts's Register of Clocks—to document a previously obscure chapter in the history of this frequently neglected business: the crafting, sale, and distribution of grandfather clocks in eighteenth-century rural Wales. And if, as Landes contends, “the consumption of timepieces may well be the best proxy measure of modernization,” then Davies's study illuminates a key development in the rise of the modern world.
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References
1 The quotation in the précis is from Landes, David S., Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 325.Google Scholar The epigraph is from Loomes, Brian, Country Clock-makers and their London Origins (Newton Abbot, 1976).Google Scholar
The original manuscript of Roberts's Register is in private possession, but the Welsh Folk Museum, St. Fagans, Cardiff, Wales, has two photographic facsimiles, one made in the 1930s, the other in the 1970s. The Museum's late curator, Peate, Iorwerth C., described the Register briefly in “Two Montgomeryshire Craftsmen,” Montgomeryshire Collections 48 (1943): 3–5Google Scholar, and in Clocks and Watch Makers in Wales (Llandysul, 1945; rev. ed. 1975), 21–22, 74, 93. An illustration and some extracts from Peate's account were repeated in Edwardes, Ernest L., The Grandfather Clock: An Historical and Descriptive Treatise on the English Long Case, with Notes on Some Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Examples (Altrincham, 1949; 3d ed. 1971), 42–43Google Scholar, Plate 194. See also Loomes, 78–89.
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3 Notably the business records of Thwaites and Reed, of Clerkenwell and Bowling Green Lane, London, running from 1780 to 1955; and Victor Kullberg, Liverpool Road, London, running from 1868 to 1943. See Bromley, John, comp., The Clockmakers' Library: The Catalogue of the Books and Manuscripts in the Library of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers (London, 1977), nos. 1000–1034, 1045–62.Google Scholar
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19 Map 1 and Table 3 were compiled bv locating place names on the following Ordnance Survev Sheets: (i) 125, 126, 136; 1:50,000, first series; (ii) S.J. 00, 01, 10, 11; scale 2½ inches to 1 mile (1952); Sheet 40: Montgomery: Scale 1 inch to 1 mile (David and Charles facsimile, 1970 reprint of survey started in early 1800s and completed in 1830). See also Davies, Elwyn, ed., A Gazetteer of Welsh Place Names (Cardiff, 1957)Google Scholar, and Thomas Morgan, The Place Names of Wales (2d rev. ed., 1912), 224–35. It is impossible to be precise about some places, either because the entry is incomplete (“Pant-v-“) or because some place names (Pentre, Bwlch, Cwm, Bryn, Allt, etc.) are common to most Welsh localities, often as informal local abbreviations. Where it seems reasonable to allocate these to places in the neighborhood of Llanfair Caereinion, this has been done.
21 The addition of a trade or place name to a surname helps to discriminate among the handful of well-established classic Welsh surnames; the Register contains twenty-one customers by the name of Davies, twenty-three Evanses, twelve Lloyds, sixteen Morrises, twenty-one Thomases, and fully thirty-eight Joneses. See also Morris, T. E., “Welsh Surnames in the Border Counties of Wales,” Y Cymmrodor 43 (1932): 93ff.Google Scholar
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37 Landes, Revolution in Time, 325–26.