Quarter-repeating watch movement, ready for finishing

An unfinished quarter repeating 'rough' watch movement c.1820, supplied in a tin box. Large full plate frame with finished plunge quarter-repeating work, hammers, etc, but no gongs. Train supplied complete with uncut fusee, plus 14 other parts in small paper pill box and the cock table left extra deep so it can be finished for any form of balance and spring. No escapement parts nor any makers stamps.

At around the time this quarter-repeating movement was being produced, Rees’s Cyclopedia of 1819-20 defined 13 different craftsmen employed within the trade of the ‘movement maker’ in the fabrication of an unfinished plain verge movement. Many of the best British manufacturers of these movements were, certainly from the 18th century onwards, based in the North-West of England in Lancashire. Rees goes on to define a further 21 tradesmen employed to complete the watch, once the rough movement had been received by the commissioning ‘watchmaker’, either directly from the manufacturer or via one of the London tool shops. For a repeating watch, the same craftsmen were also employed to make those parts of the repeating work similar to the plain movement, such as its mainspring or ‘runners’ (the repeater’s train of wheels and pinions). One additional skilled craftsman was employed in the place of the ‘motion-maker’; the ‘repeating motion-maker’, who made the repeating work found under the dial, and for later repeaters like this one, the gongs on which the hammers struck.

It is clear that this unfinished quarter-repeating watch had yet to pass through the hands of at least 20 of the 34 or so craftsmen defined by Rees as being involved in its manufacture. Clockmakers' Museum No. 1520