Dr. James Nye gave a lecture on the Chelsea Clock House and the 18th century clockmaker, Edmund Howard, on Mon 18th February at 6.30 pm at Chelsea Old Town Hall. The full text of his lecture may be found at https://ahsoc.contentfiles.net/media/assets/file/Edmund_Howard_by_J_Nye_SF.pdf
This Victorian photograph of Chelsea Old Church shows its clock clearly, but Howard’s mechanism was removed and replaced after the WWII bombing, and was last seen in Dent’s workshop in 1957. Does anyone know where it is now? Another example of Howard’s work was removed from the stables at Finborough Hall in Suffolk – does anyone know what happened to it?
Dr James Nye, a historian and writer, spent a year piecing together the story of both clock and maker. The trail uncovered a remarkable manuscript autobiography of the clockmaker, Edmund Howard, who lived at the Clock House, next to the site of the Moravian Burial Ground at World’s End from the 1740s till his death in 1798. The building was demolished in the mid-19th century.
The gateway to the right of the house is very likely where the gateway to the Moravian burial ground now stands.
Edmund Howard was a Quaker, who lived to a great age. The talk by Dr. Nye illuminated the life of Howard, and the clock he made for his local church in Chelsea, offering a rich account of eighteenth century life close to the King’s Road.
Dr. Nye is a resident of Chelsea, and is Chairman of the Antiquarian Horological Society https://www.ahsoc.org/
