grandfather clock

[plasticpigeon]

Hello pppeopple

I am fascinated by old clocks, and watches, and have recently realised that beatiful old clocks are actually quite affordable. There are always many lovely long case clocks on ebay for just a couple of hundred pounds or so. Far to cheap for what they are. Anyway, i live in a small terrace, the two main rooms are around 13ft by 11 ft, so pretty small but we do at least have a separate narrow half hallway. I was wondering if such a house would ever have housed a long case clock, and if so, where would have been traditional to keep it. I know i really don't need to create a historically accurate museum to live in, but it is nice to know these things. I have realised that part of my reason for trying to restore my little house is not just to have a nice place to live, but to reflect that I have some knowledge of the past, which doesn't seem rational as it might well colour my taste but not all of life's decisions have to be logical.

 

[Moo]

Don't forget ceiling heights!
We had to get rid of our long case clock when we left Norwich for that very reason.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Luckily our ceilings are around 9ft!

 

[Lime]

As I understand it, long case clocks were positioned in a place that allowed the hour to be seen and heard by whoever needed to be aware of it.

 

[88v8]

A full-size long case, I doubt it.
In the 20s & 30s there were smaller and more affordable 'grandmother' clocks.
These have the additional merit of the chime being switchable, so you can turn it off at night, not so with many long cases.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-Superb-Westminster-Chime-Grandmother-Clock-By-Elliott-/351010728537?pt=UK_Clocks&hash=item51b9deaa59
and if one likes exposed weights
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Beautiful-Mahogany-Cased-Grandmother-Clock-with-3-weights-Chimes-on-Hour-/131126806611?pt=UK_Clocks&hash=item1e87c44853
This one is quite handsome, the seller seems honest
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antique-German-JUNGHANS-Grandmother-Clock-circa-1910-/151239577629?pt=UK_Clocks&hash=item233694d01d
***
We have a 1920s grandmother here that we bought for our landing perhaps ten years ago. I think we paid around £1,500 for it from a clock dealer in Weybridge.
Here it is in our previous (boohoo) house



(The paper is or was a William Morris, Standen. And there are/were some more of those brass light switches of which Penners is so fond [not])

When we moved, I also clung to our not very tall 1710 long case, which was fine at home beneath the 8'3" ceilings, but here it's really too big/tall for our sitting room, where it fits only by an inch or so beneath the ceiling and looks rather silly. Thus far, I haven't even bothered to retrieve the movement from the stores. Partly this is because I had to re-rope it shortly before we moved house and managed to reeve the rope the wrong way, so that it runs backwards. I'll probably get it converted to chain drive, as although it's old, it has no great horological merit. The only thing known about the maker of the movement is that he went bust in 1710.
Here it was at home



The door, as you may surmise, is a later replacement.
Pause also to admire the subtle décor - the rich red paintwork and the yellow carpet, on top of which there was a large Persian-type rug. Tasteful, eh, what? Well, I liked it. Never been afraid of patterns and colour.

*** Despite being a great fan of eBay, I would not buy a clock sight-unseen. Too easy to buy a knackered movement which hasn't been cleaned & oiled for years, and a poor case that's been stood near a radiator, or, indeed a marriage of little value. They're not that dear from a specialist dealer.

Ivor

 

[Moo]

I like those light switches. We had them in our last house and I'm planning to use them here, in place of the current flat white plastic things.
Don't care what that Penners bloke says.

 

[philpjuk100]

Most of my welsh relatives had grandfather clocks in the 40s/50s in quite modest houses,I think they came from estate sales, ( one had the name of a shop with the letters replacing the hour numbers ) They were not treated with any reverance and not all of them ran although my grandparents did and I remember the sound of it chiming in the hallway with a flag floor,great echo! I think it was burned with the piano and the wind up gramaphone when the house was sold!. (no ebay then!)

 

[philpjuk100]

We brought our white faced W. Mather of Halifax long case clock with us from our last house and it is too tall and is stood in the only place that has the head room.It is 30 hour with fake eight day winding holes painted on,it is difficult to wind where it is and is not on my route to bed so does not get wound as often as it should so is often stopped.It was purchased from a junk shop for "not a lot" and brought home in the wife`s 2CV nearly fourty years ago.Why not get a "regulator" easy to sight and ours (an old family piece) has a lovely chime and keeps good time and only needs a weekly wind.

 

[Keithj]

I'm another clock lover. Two longcase, one grandmother, a German regulator, and a variety of carriage clocks and other such items.

This house has typical Tudor low ceilings, which mean there are very few places to put the longcase clocks. One is in my study, with the eagle and brass balls from the top inside the case, and the top of the hood half an inch from the ceiling. The other is in the garden room, which is a newbuild and has fine high ceilings. One used to live on the staircase of the Norfolk hideaway till we stopped using that.

Both can be turned off at night so that they don't strike. The modification is very Heath Robinson, but it works. There's a string round the arbor of the hammer, which can be tightened by means of a lever inside the lower door of the clock. It then holds the hammer back so that it doesn't reach the bell when the mechanism runs. The clicks can be heard, but it doesn't wake up SWMBO. Remove the string and the lever (leaving one hole inside the door) and nobody would know it's been there.

 

[philpjuk100]

The bell on ours has the center hole drilled eccentrically so if you turn it a bit the hammer misses!,the hood cannot be removed from ours because of the beams,the clock has to be assembled on its side on the floor and then stood up!.When we moved the Vienna regulator there was a large iron hook sticking out of the wall so we hung it on that,it was only a wattle and daub wall and it came out dropping the clock on the floor breaking the case,glass and pendulum suspension spring,I have fixed it now and it hangs from a strip iron hook from the beam!.

 

[LadyArowana]

I love clocks too, but the hallway in the flat is tiny. I thought I would have to go without but then I happened across something that I loved for the space. They told me it was a Russian piece from a ship. I know how these tall takes circulate to attribute nautical beginnings to all manner of things and wondered if it was just something newly made. However some time later I discovered an acquaintance is a very serious collector of soviet time pieces and when I showed him pix he said it was exactly what they had told me it was. In fact he even has one in his collection, he keeps everything documented http://www.ussrtime.com/ He told me where to find the date and mine was from 1959, although they were made for a long time to exactly the same design.

 

[Flyfisher]

Does it chime?

We have a clock modelled on a ship's clock that chimes one bell every half hour and two bells on the hour in a four hour cycle, which is apparently based on four hour nautical 'watches', starting at 12, 4 & 8 o'clock, day and night.

So, those hours chime eight bells as in ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding (a pair for each hour).

Thereafter, the sequence will be every half hour as follows :

Ding - for the half hour
Ding-ding - for the first hour into the new watch, then . . .
Ding-ding, ding
Ding-ding, ding-ding
Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding
Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding
Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding

Then, finally the 8 bell sequence to signify change of watch, whereupon it repeats.

If any of that makes sense.

 

[LadyArowana]

No it's silent, but we have the Victorian slate one that chimes ( hour and half hour ) so it would get a bit noisy if it did. I have a cuckoo one in the kitchen in Singapore and a shield clock in the study there too, it drives His Lordship a bit batty when they become non-synchronised. The cuckoo is a replica old one, like this but the hands and dial are a little different. The chime is on a glass bell.

 

[philpjuk100]

Ah a cuckoo clock! remember Eric Sykes peter? I have a clock from a Russian MIG fighter in my austin seven,it must get a little bored!. FF Isn`t the ships bell clock called a "ting tang"? my grandfather had one,that and his hunter (watch not horse) were his proudest possessions.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Nearly 20 years ago I bought what I then thought was a rather good 18th century longcase clock from an established dealer, for a hefty price. The dial was signed by a well known Rochdale maker and the mahogany case, with its blind fretwork, canted corners and swan necked pediment looked like a proper, contemporary Gillows-style Lancashire case. Only much later did I discover the truth about it. The dial started off life with a 30 hour movement behind it which was later replaced with an 8 day movement (of reasonable quality, but by an unknown maker). The bottom half of the case is indeed a good Gillows-style one, but the hood did not start off life with it. In short my clock was concocted from three of four bits of different clocks. I have kept it because it is quite decorative, but I was sold a pup.

 

[88v8]

Nearly 20 years ago I bought what I then thought was a rather good 18th century longcase clock from an established dealer, for a hefty price.

Oh dear. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
I wonder if the dealer knew.
Unfortunately, it's too easy to make a marriage; our longcase is of the correct period and region for the movement, amd the movement appears to belong to the face as neither has been redrilled, but the movement support has clearly been concocted. Came from a dealer in Burford, an impulse purchase on the way home from a Cotswold holiday in the 1990s. But it was only £1,750 or so.

Ivor

 

[Keith Bowman]

Whereas we paid under £100 in the 1970s for our simple, unassuming, country made long case clock and as far as I can see that is what it has always been. Painted face, no fancy moving suns and moons, just the time and date. It has always been too tall for any room in the house (probably why it was cheap) and stands on a landing half way up the stairs.

 

[steveb]

I'm rather attached to grandma's clock (grandma probably hasn't got much use for it nowadays) which sits on some kind of drawer contraption as we don't have a mantelpiece.

Entirely unknown vintage but sits nicely in a small cottage and goes tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick BONG

runs for at least 7 days , you can see the key and the last receipt for repair (in 2003!) underneath it... Do these things need any "maintenance" at all, apart from winding?

-Steve

 

[LadyArowana]

That's a pretty clock, oak case? I don't do any sort of maintenance on ours other than winding. My kitchen cuckoo became a little sulky to restart after a few years running. I would start the pendulum, but it wouldn't run properly and would stop after about 5 mins. I took it off the wall and gave it a bit of a spritz inside with WD40 ( probably completely the wrong thing to do, but it's just a new mechanism and I wasn't wanting to try and find a repairer ) and that cured the problem right away. Some of the fancy "Atmos" clocks definitely need proper servicing, but basic mechanical ones seem very robust. One word of caution with the WD40, it isn't something you would want to get on the case, likely to leave nasty stains on the wood, painted decoration, gilding or slate. One of ours just chimed, telling me it's time to get out of bed .....

 

[steveb]

no idea what it is - you can have a closer pic if you like though... It's inlaid with bits of metal that have bowed and the ends stuck out in a couple of places, and you can see the fretwork on the right side is very delicate and has been crushed in the middle by some clumsy clot picking it up from the sides rather than underneath...

It even nearly tells the right time (although running fast at the moment, I am working on twiddling the pendulum to slow it down a touch)