My name is Oliver Cooke
I'm a curator of horology here
and welcome to my corner.
So this clock drew me to it because it's just a bit different from the normal long case clock of the period.
It's a night clock.
And what it does is
it has an oil lamp or would have had an oil lamp behind the dial here
and the light would shine through these pierced numerals
and enable the time to be read at night
which is very important because back in 1675 or so
when this was made you couldn't just switch on a light like we can now.
You'd need some other way of giving you the time if you needed it.
These clocks were very rare.
Perhaps one reason for that was because
naked flames inside wooden clock cases were not a very good mix
– or perhaps too good a mix, if you look at it like that –
and there's perhaps four or five of these clocks left
four or five English night clocks left.
First thing we need to do is open the trunk door here
by putting a key in.
Inside the clock we have the driving weight
which is a lump of lead that starts up here at the start of a week
and over the course of a week descends through the clock until it stops
until it hits the floor or the line runs out.
So that's where the energy to drive the clock is coming from
and behind it here swinging in a very small arc
because this clock is worn out and tired
is the pendulum
and that's keeping the time, this regular beat, it's swinging left and right once a second
and that's the job of the pendulum.
So what I'll do now is lift the hood and we'll have a closer look at the dial.
So this is a typical arrangement for a clock of this period.
In fact, we call this style of case a rising hood case because the hood rises.
And now we have access to the dial
and now I can get my winding key
which is conveniently held on a hook inside the clock.
This isn't an original winding key I should add but it fits.
So just to show you what happens when I wind the clock
I place the key on this square at the bottom of the dial
and I turn and you'll see as I turn the weight rising
and I won't wind it all the way today
but when this weight's at the top
it will take about a week or eight days to get to the bottom.
Here we have nine so we know it's nine o'clock on something.
Each one of these division around the edge here is one minute.
So we have 0, 15, 30, 45,
and these notches are the minutes
and the numeral appears here at the new hour.
So here the clock is showing 9:44.
And if I want to set the time I stick the key on this square
and just I simply turn
and as I turn you'll see the nine disappear
and on the left-hand side the ten will appear.
And that is what we call a wandering hour dial
because the hour wanders up and over during the course of an hour.
So now we've taken the mechanism out the case and brought it to the table
so I can show you a few interesting things about it.
And the first thing to show you is what we have behind the dial here.
If I switch our 'oil lamp' back on
and bring it behind the dial
you'll see the numerals lighting up nicely
but what we have here is this ugly contrivance
which is simply a bit of red tissue on a hanger
and what you may have noticed is as that soon as I took that out
you were able to see the light directly behind the numerals.
So there's a diffuser there which originally I would imagine would have been some red silk
probably glued to the back of the dial plate here.
Now what I want to do is show you behind
so I'll turn the movement round
and I'll turn the 'oil lamp' off.
First of all you'll see the mechanism is contained behind this brass plate.
And what I want to do now is to give you an even better idea of how it works.
So I'll just pop the dial off the mechanism and you'll see exactly what's happening there.
It's worth looking at because it's ingenious.
So now we'll do that.
Put that aside
and now what you can see here
are the numerals on a chain.
So as our clock proceeds...
You're getting a better idea of how it works now...
You have all twelve numerals – 1 to 12 – on this chain
and each consecutive number is spaced five apart.
So as the disc comes round it brings the numerals up with it.
And that's how the system works, ingenious.
And there we go
that's the wandering hour dial
and the beautiful night clock by Edward East.
If you want to see this clock it's on permanent display in Gallery 39
the clocks and watches display
where we have 88 watches 100 or so clocks
and it's definitely worth a visit, please do.