QUEST FOR A CLOCK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVII, Issue 10755, 28 October 1926, Page 8

QUEST FOR A CLOCK.

PRESENT OWNER UNTRACEABLE. When, addressing the West Hartlepool (England) Rotary Club on "Old North-Country Clocks," Mr C. Leo Reid, Newcastle, gave the. history of "Master Humphreys's Clock," made famous by Charles Dickens, and mentioned that he had been unable to trace the present owner of this clock, and would be glad to have information on'that point. This clock, writes a correspondent of the Newcastle "Weekly Chronicle," was no figment of the novelist's imagination, but a truly remarkable work of a youth of 16 or 17. years of age, for William Humphreys (son of Thomas Humphreys, of Barnard Castle) was bom there in 1812, and m 1828 commenced to make this celebrated clock, which he enclosed in a very fine lacquered case of the grandfather type. It was one of the first to be made with the centre-seconds hand; a large hand (or pointer) moving round the entire circumference of the whole dial in one minute. Charles Dickens stayed at the King's Head Inn, Barnard Castle, opposite Thomas Humphreys's shop. Dropping in one day to time his watch by the fine grandfather clock, which stood just within the doorway, he asked old Thomas, "Who made that clock?' Humphreys replied "My lad, there," and Dickens remarked, "So that is Master Humphreys's Clock," and named his novel after it. William Humphreys removed to Old Hartlepool in 1838, and took "Master Humphreys's Clock" with him. One writer on this subject states that in 1887 it was on view in the North Court of the Newcastle Jubilee Exhibition. Where is it now?