Our Grandfather Clock

How does that saying go? - "Time waits for no man". A grandfather clock has stood in the corner of the dining room at my parent's house for as long as they have been married. This clock is an antique and it was a bargain at the auction price of £5. The clock has been with them since they first set up home and almost 60 years later the grandfather clock remains a much-loved member of the family.

When they brought it home, it was a pile of pieces on the floor of the kitchen but my father performed some delicate clock repair on it and managed to get it going.

I used to use the gap behind the grandfather clock as a hiding place for hide and seek (until I grew too much and didn't fit any more) and for hiding my grandmother's handbag in the case of the clock so that she couldn't go home one day! The soft and rhythmic tick tock has been such a comfort to me on many occasions, particularly when I couldn't sleep, the unmistakable chime of the grandfather clock letting me know what time it was without needing to disturb anyone else.

Children and grandchildren have all peeked inside to watch the pendulum swing or to watch Grandad going through the ceremony of winding the weights up each week at precisely 7.25 am on a Sunday. This was the only time in the morning he could fit the key into both the keyholes on the face because only then were the grandfather clock hands in the right place!

Age has taken it's toll on the grandfather clock I'm afraid and it has had to have the clock repair guy come and give it some tender loving care many times. 20 years ago my parents moved house and they decided that it would be a good opportunity to have the clock cleaned and serviced before it took it's place in the new home. The clock repair specialist who did the work became interested in the clocks history because he noticed that the casing was relatively modern compared to the movement, which probably indicated early 20th century.

The repairman was so interested that he took some photographs of the clock and movement and sent them to the British Museum in London. I think that curiosity got the better of him and he just had to find out what the clock was all about. The British Museum told us that our clock was a wall clock. Well that came as a bit of a surprise I have to say. Apparently it wasn't built as a grandfather clock at all.

The maker of our grandfather clock was a Dutchman called A. Fromanteel although we are not sure which one, the father Ahasuerus who came to England in 1620 and developed the pendulum clock in 1658 or Abraham, it certainly has a much finer pedigree than we do!

From very scanty research on the Internet we have found out that the Fromanteel family were innovators and were the first to produce a clock that was accurate and not affected by the weather. Each clock that they built had some new feature on it. Our own grandfather clock has a pillar movement although I know that the date feature no longer works.

Has this information made a difference to us? No. To us it is still the grandfather clock of our childhood, a comforting reminder of happy memories and life and time moving on.

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Steve is a software engineer and owner of The Grandfather Clock www.thegrandfatherclock.com

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